Planes, Trains & Auto­mo­biles is the ulti­mate anti-road movie

Of course, not all road movies deal in such roman­ti­cised absolutes. In 1987 John Hugh­es reimag­ined the Amer­i­can road trip as a calami­tous, entire­ly unap­peal­ing expe­ri­ence in the form of Planes, Trains & Auto­mo­biles. By Hugh­es’ hand, the rogu­ish bik­ers of Den­nis Hop­per and Peter Fon­da in Easy Rid­er become hap­py-go-lucky imbe­cile Del Grif­fith (John Can­dy) and can­tan­ker­ous NYC suit Neal Page (Steve Mar­tin). There is noth­ing cool or empow­er­ing about this pro­tag­o­nist pair­ing, they are sim­ply ordi­nary Amer­i­cans whose paths cross again and again. Their jour­ney togeth­er marks an over­lap between reach­ing new fron­tiers in the Amer­i­can road movie canon, as well as acknowl­edg­ing the exist­ing legacy.

Hugh­es’ script bears all the hall­marks of a clas­sic road movie, most evi­dent­ly in the arc of a char­ac­ter who is try­ing to get home to his fam­i­ly. Set around Thanks­giv­ing and open­ing with a phys­i­cal com­e­dy rou­tine in the streets of New York City, the film con­stant­ly glances at a cer­tain time-hon­oured Amer­i­can sen­si­bil­i­ty in its rear-view mirror.

Martin’s Page is des­per­ate to get away from his job as a high-fly­ing exec­u­tive in NYC see he can cel­e­brate the hol­i­days with his fam­i­ly in Chica­go. But inclement weath­er, rude taxi dri­vers and a rotund show­er cur­tain ring sales­man con­spire against him, and his sim­ple trip soon turns into a mad­den­ing odyssey. After his cab is nicked by a mys­te­ri­ous, cheru­bic-faced man, Page arrives at O’Hare air­port with min­utes to spare – only to find the per­pe­tra­tor sit­ting oppo­site him in the depar­ture lounge. ​“Don’t I know you from some­where?” says Grif­fith, seem­ing­ly obliv­i­ous to Page’s obvi­ous attempts to ignore him. This ques­tion is the cat­a­lyst for Hugh­es’ grand­est cin­e­mat­ic out­ing, a vehic­u­lar menagerie of flam­ing rental cars, refrig­er­at­ed milk trucks and crowd­ed trains.

The first motel the pair end up in is famil­iar­ly sleazy but with­out the cus­tom­ary ram­shackle charm. Clan­des­tine liaisons in heart-shaped jacuzzis and break­fast at the local din­er – a cen­tral motif in any self-respect­ing Amer­i­can road movie – is lost in the win­tery bliz­zard of Hugh­es’ nar­ra­tive. Instead, the motel is a run­down rest stop that serves as a bat­tle­ground for these unwit­ting trav­el­ling com­pan­ions. Sim­i­lar­ly, when Grif­fith and Page stop for cof­fee they dis­cov­er that all their mon­ey has been stolen, thus sub­vert­ing the navel gaz­ing that typ­i­cal­ly occurs in these road­side institutions.

Planes, Trains & Auto­mo­biles has very lit­tle in com­mon with Jack Kerouac’s ear­li­er sto­ry – there’s no wom­an­is­ing, booz­ing or wild nights of the soul here. This is the cold and sober­ing come­down of real lives in a real Amer­i­ca that doesn’t so much invite peo­ple in as shun them from attempt­ing to nav­i­gate it. There’s no for­get­ting the vehi­cles Grif­fith and Page com­man­deer dur­ing their excur­sion either. Thel­ma and Louise’s con­vert­ible and the roar­ing Harleys of Easy Rid­er are lost in the metaphor­i­cal fend­er-ben­der of this par­tic­u­lar jour­ney, where var­i­ous modes of trans­port sti­fle rather than lib­er­ate our intre­pid duo.

Thir­ty years on, Hugh­es’ film remains as hilar­i­ous and mov­ing as ever – in part because the direc­tor showed us a side of Amer­i­ca that we know only too well. It’s an Amer­i­ca of desk clerks obsti­nate­ly stick­ing to their rules, an Amer­i­ca of can­celled flights and agi­tat­ed trav­ellers sweat­ing in crowd­ed ter­mi­nals. It is in many ways a vision of Amer­i­ca in the 1980s, but one which has nev­er real­ly run out of gas.