I've this film probably over a hundred time since I was a kid and it never ceases to be funny. I know everything that happens in it and every time I watch it all again it's hilarious. It's one of the best of the particular kind of feel-good comedies of the 80s/early 90s, which were hit-and-miss, sometimes funny, sometimes crass. I love a lot of those films, but looking back at them a lot of it's probably nostalgia because they haven't all aged well, although they're refreshingly un-pc, unclean and freewheeling compared with some of the glossier mainstream films I've seen since since the early noughts. Planes, Trains & Automobiles is my favourite of those films. Steve Martin and John Candy are a great comedy duo and they play great characters, wound up businessman Neal Page and travelling shower curtain ring salesman Del Griffith who never zips his mouth and lets all be known, even going so far as to take off his black sock and wave it in front of Neal's face on the plane. They meet up when he Del steals Neal's cab and the flight is delayed. Bad weather leads them to a motel room where hilarious hijinks ensue and their sexual orientation and masculinity is threatened.
One of the things I like most about the film is the photography. Nothing is glossed over, the sun isn't shining and there's no beautiful scenery. It never looks set up or faked, it's set in run down motels and bus stations and diners and small drive through towns and it all looks snowed in, dirty, muddy and grim. It all looks natural. All the extras look like random hillbillies, bums and runaways. It all looks real. It's like The Last Detail in a sense, another great travelling film.
Del and Neal are great characters. Neal is an uptight, intolerant control freak who wants everything to go his way, Del is a carefree man who goes with everything and likes it because as is learned later in the film he doesn't really have anything. Neal lashes out at him and Del can only reply that he likes himself and what you see is what you get. Del seems to get them into dangerous and impossible situations and then gets out of them through sheer luck. In one of the funniest scenes in the film and probably my favourite, they're in a car going down a highway and Del gets his parka caught on the seat lever. He wrestles frantically only to get the other side caught in a lever too, so he ends up steering with his legs until a stop sign forces his foot on the breaks and he goes spinning and stops safely. He then drives on and two people shout at him from their car and tell them they're going the wrong way. They think they're drunk, because how would they know where they're going, but then Neal realises and they end up jammed in between two trucks, before stopping safely, only to have the car blow up because of a cigarette Del threw away earlier. Del Griffith is the ultimate agent of chaos, everything he touches goes wrong. The rightfully frightens Neal, who seems too anxious to touch anything but ends up learning the value of what he really has after losing his credit cards and his self-image.
The film has a happy/sad ending, as it turns out Del is a lost character, but Neal takes him in. The finale is a bit soppy as are all the family scenes, but that's nothing because every scene in the film is one laugh after another. Also, what the hell is in Del's big trunk?
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