Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987, 93 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093748/
In my own way of paying tribute to the now deceased John Hughes, I decide to watch one of his movies I've never seen in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.
The movie follows Steve Martin as Neal Page as he tries to get home to his family for Thanksgiving. Every step of the way he unfortunately bumps into Del Griffith (John Candy). The movie follows the incredible "adventure" they have going home.
I'm a big fan of Steve Martin so I naturally liked his acting. John Candy was also perfectly cast in his role. The overweight and overly polite to the point of annoying look for Del Griffith was great and Candy took the role and made it phenomenal.
The thing I didn't like with this movie was that it feel victim to the "everything goes wrong" syndrome. Seriously, every single thing that could possibly happen actually happened. And it got pretty stupid about an hour into the movie. One example was driving on the wrong side of the road. While this mishap was setup fine, the execution of how it happened was lacking. In short, the duo was incredible lucky and should've died right here. Other catastrophes were similarly crazy. While I might be overly harsh on these moments, many were quite funny. At some of the bus moments I did find myself laughing.
One other comment I have on this movie: it could have been a lot more. The movie touched on this at the end with the points on Del Griffith and his wife. This could have been incorporated into the film in some way to make it almost timeless - much like how Groundhog Day is a deep and moving work of art while also being incredibly comical. I believe this film had that potential and it just chose to be something else.
Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. I'm somewhat saddened by this since I liked The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off is my favorite movie. However, it still has great performances by Martin and Candy and some comically zany moments to make it a decent show.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment