Writer/director John Hugh­es had had a series of suc­cess­ful movies in the eight­ies fea­tur­ing teenage angst and adven­tures (Weird Sci­ence, Break­fast Club, Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off) when he embarked on this, the more grown-up movie, Planes, Trains and Auto­mo­biles. It’s a com­e­dy, and it is indeed packed with com­ic set pieces, but it’s a lot more than that: it has a gen­uine pathos and poignan­cy.

Inspired by an actu­al hell­ish trip that Hugh­es had per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced, in which var­i­ous delays and diver­sions had kept him from get­ting home for an entire week­end, Hugh­es appar­ent­ly wrote the first six­ty pages of the script in just six hours. Steve Mar­tin plays Neal Page, a mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive des­per­ate to get back home to Chica­go to see his wife and kids for Thanks­giv­ing, and who along the way becomes sad­dled with show­er cur­tain ring sales­man Del Grif­fith (John Can­dy). Mishaps befall the two through­out their trav­els, and they endure every indig­ni­ty that mod­ern trav­el can inflict on its vic­tims.

The suc­cess of the movie is found­ed on the essen­tial natures of its two prin­ci­pal actors: Steve Mar­tin and John Can­dy embody them­selves, and this is key to why the film is able to reveal so much heart and truth. Neal spends the movie try­ing to peel off from Del, whilst Del spends the movie hav­ing his feel­ings hurt and then com­ing through for Neal any­way. It is road trip and bud­dy movie rolled into one, done to high­ly comedic effect, and my fam­i­ly returns to it time after time.

The last scenes of the movie deliv­er the emo­tion­al pay­off we have been half-expect­ing all along. Neal under­goes a kind of moral rebirth: we know he has learned a valu­able les­son about empa­thy, and there is true poignan­cy in the scene where Neal finds Del wait­ing alone on the L plat­form. Inci­den­tal­ly, there is a moment just before this scene where Neal, on the train home before he returns to find Del, starts to laugh qui­et­ly to him­self as he recalls their mis­ad­ven­tures. It’s won­der­ful­ly nat­ur­al and it turns out that there was good rea­son for that: unbe­knownst to Steve Mar­tin, Hugh­es had kept the cam­eras rolling in between takes on the Chica­go train, while Mar­tin was think­ing about his next lines, and in so doing cap­tured this unguard­ed moment. I include it, along with a few of the oth­er great scenes in the two-part mon­tage below.