R for one scene with comic profanity; very mild for the rest of the film. Best suited for all families — slapstick for the younger ones, poignant friendship for everyone else.
Lolling around, post-Thanksgiving dinner, swimming in the stupor of the turkey juices and that extra piece of pie, there’s something cathartic about watching other people’s horror stories.
“The Wizard of Oz” has always been a traditional favorite over the T-Day weekend, with those horrid flying monkeys making us shiver in voyeuristic delight. “Jurassic Park” is a more recent holiday tradition, with the littlest ones hiding behind the legs of their parents or aunts and uncles when the velociraptors invade the kitchen.
This year, I’m recommending the more mundane, but no less terrifying, horrors of holiday travel gone bad, in “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.” John Hughes’ apocryphal tale of Neal Page and Del Griffith trying to get home for Thanksgiving is a deceptively simple story of mismatched personalities hitting the road.
Nurtured by the poignant humor of Steve Martin and John Candy, Hughes’ anti-buddy story expands into a classic, touching on everything from the unspoken American class system to the pitiless chill of a Midwestern winter. Neal and Del insult each other relentlessly at first, but eventually reach a truce that is both believable and truly heartwarming.
Edited versions play often on cable TV. If you rent the full “R-rated” version, one scene might give you pause with the remote — when Steve Martin chews out a severely annoying rental car clerk, Wikipedia counts 19 quick F-bombs. The rest of the movie is PG-13 at worst.
One of my favorite scenes is when Del redeems his sales job — American Light and Fixture, shower curtain ring division — by trading his samples for spare change. The late John Candy was at his best here, perfectly matched with lines like this: “Well, you think what you want about me; I’m not changing. I like I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. ‘Cause I’m the real article.”
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
