Reeling Backward: "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" (1987)

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and mine is this: "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" is simply one of the funniest movies every made, not to mention a beacon of absolute joy.

I can't think of a film that I have laughed at harder, longer or more consistently. And it's not especially sophisticated humor -- mostly pratfalls, gross-out moments and personality clashes. It's the classic odd couple tale, with a more or less straight man bothered and befuddled by a loudmouth lout. These are signature roles in the careers of both Steve Martin and John Candy.

With a few script changes, you could easily have made it in the 1940s with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

It's hard to believe it's been 30 years since "Planes" came out, but here it is getting a very nice Blu-ray combo pack video reissue from Paramount. This is definitely one that will stay in my library. It includes a great transfer plus plenty of cool bonus material, including a press footage from the film's promotional tour and a comprehensive overview of the career of John Hughes.

Up till then Hughes had been known exclusively for teen dramedies, so it was considered a big risk at the time for him to make an R-rated comedy featuring a pair of middle-aged men. The film was a critical and commercially successful, though not a runaway hit. Its reputation has only grown with the years.

You know the story: persnickety marketing executive Neal Page (Martin) is trying to get back home to Chicago for Thanksgiving after his meeting in New York runs late. He is repeatedly foiled by circumstance and the intrusion of Del Griffith (Candy), a jovial traveling salesman who hocks shower curtain rings. They ping-pong back and forth between antagonism and cooperation as they make their journey by the various conveyances listed in the title, along with a few others.

I can easily tell you the movie's high point for me. After having their plane grounded in Witchita by bad weather and their train broken down on the tracks, their cut-rate bus tickets only get them as far as St. Louis. (All their cash had been stolen by a motel thief.) Del manages to secure a rental car -- using Neal's credit card, which had earlier gotten switched between wallets by the hapless motel operator, Gus (Charles Tyner) -- and they're cruising down the road.

(The car, an ugly little green Chrysler LeBaron Town and Country convertible with wood paneling, surely must be the diminutive cousin of the station wagon from "Vacation.")

This entire sequence is 10 minutes or so of pure hilarity. Hughes warms us up with some contretemps over the passenger power seat, which Del manages to break. Then Del loudly cranks up the radio playing Ray Charles' "Mess Around" while Neal snoozes next to him. Del be-bops and shakes his thing while driving down the road in the middle of the night, repeatedly looking over to Neal, hoping he'll wake up and join in.

It's a tiny encapsulation of their entire relationship: Del, the man who can't stop reaching out, and Neal, the guy who just wants to be left alone.

Del gets his coat sleeves caught on the seat while trying to remove it, leading to a crazy screaming spin-out that finally awakens Neal. Del, trying to cover up his latest screw-up, reassures him and starts driving again, not realizing they're going the wrong way on the interstate. Failing to heed the warnings of another motorist, they carom between two semis, a fireworks of sparks spraying everywhere. Neal looks over at Del and envisions him dressed in the full red devil's suit, from horns to cape, laughing with wild glee.

Funny stuff, but what follows is even funnier. As they realize how close they've come to death, each man discovers the extent of their peril. Del has bent the steering wheel in half, and Neal gripped the dashboard so ferociously that he's left finger-shaped indents, an audible pop sounding as he pulls his hands free.

If you don't bust a gut laughing at that, I can't help you.

I love that the mystery of Del's oversized trunk is never solved. He trundles that thing everywhere, platooned with stickers and an endless source of grief. It's his totem and, quite literally, his baggage. Does he keep his shower rings in there? Souvenirs from his wife? Like the glowing suitcase in "Pulp Fiction," it works better because it remains a mystery.

Watching the film again for the first time in awhile, I was struck by how many cameos there are by recognizable performers -- character actors and future stars. Kevin Bacon plays the young businessman who outraces Neal for a cab at the start of the film. Owen, the redneck son of the Witchita motel owner who gives them a ride to the train station in Stubbsville, is played by none other than Dylan Baker, doing a bestial snort/croak thing that's impossible to mimic without giving yourself an anyeurism.

William Windom has a cameo as the corporate honcho whose indecisiveness results in Neal being late for his plane, and Lyman Ward, who played the dad in Hughes' previous film, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," is Neal's colleague from Chicago. Bill Erwin does his signature cantankerous old man routine on the plane, and Ben Stein turns up as an airline worker delivering catastrophic news in soothing, dulcet tones.

Larry Hankin, whose specialty is playing skeevy interlopers, plays Doobie, the Kansas taxi driver with a pimped-out muscle car. Michael McKean plays the state trooper who makes Del and Neal take their burnt-out rental car off the road. Martin Ferrero, another classic "that guy" actor known for his snivelly connivers, most notably the lawyer who gets chomped by a T-rex in "Jurassic Park," is the motel clerk who accepts bribes in lieu of cash. He happily pockets Neal's expensive wristwatch, but resists Del's energetic sales job for his Casio, even after Del dangles the cheap ticker over his knuckles in full trade show mode.

Without a doubt the most iconic cameo in "Planes" belongs to Edie McClurg, who's made an entire career out of her chirpy voice, Midwest accent and matronly demeanor. She plays the car rental agent upon whom Neal unfurls a banner of f-bombs as long as your arm after he's ditched in the distant parking lot with no car. It's the most famous scene in the movie bar none, with Neal using the f-word in gerund form dozens of times before Edie lands the punchline using the same base word as a descriptive adjective.

Interestingly, without this scene and one or two other brief bits of language, "Planes" could have easily gotten away with a PG rating from the MPAA. Well, there's also the "two pillows" scene, which is probably the second most memorable scene.

Let's talk about that for a minute.

Seen today, the motel room sequence would probably be frowned upon as a homophobic example of gay panic. Forced to share a double bed, they awake in the morning to find themselves snuggling contentedly, with Del giving Neal an affection nibble on the earlobe for good measure. Then, of course, they discover the location of Del's other hand, between two pillows that are not actually pillows. They leap to their feet, screaming in disgust, then quickly covering up the awkward moment with football chatter about the Bears.

Hughes and audiences probably took the scene at face value in 1987. Seen today, though, I think the joke endures with a distinctly different color. In their half-awake state of sleep, both men are quite happy to share physical closeness and a mild bit of affection. It's only when their grogginess is punctuated, and they realize how this scene must appear, that their instincts kick in to reassert their straight self-image.

The joke is not that they might be gay, but that they're petrified of others thinking they are.

There are so many other memorable moments of "Planes, Trains &; Automobiles" to mention, but time and space runs short. Such as Del raising cash for their trip by passing off his shower rings as fashionable ladies' earrings -- which, given the state of '80s fashion, is not so incredulous as you might think.

If you haven't caught "Planes" in a while, I urge you to go back and check it out again. It's one of the true comedic gems of the 1980s.

Reeling Backward: "Pretty in Pink" (1986)

John Hughes' teen movies were bubble gum wrapped in shiny paper, containing a lot of sweet, juicy stuff with a bitter center. He told stories about teenagers not as how society saw them, but as how they saw themselves. He identified with the school misfits, but he understood the cool kids enough that he didn't dismiss their challenges as inconsequential.

The pop music cues, the likeable teen stars, the old-fashioned love triangle plot devices -- he used it all to draw in an audience of young people, ostensibly to entertain them, but really to show them a self-portrait that is flawed and glorious.

"Pretty in Pink" is an imperfect film with a pure heart. After the success of "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club," Hughes cast his personal ginger-haired muse, Molly Ringwald, in perhaps his most bleak and ambitious film to date.

I know some people might spit up at seeing "bleak" and "John Hughes" in the same sentence. But strip away the pop songs, the winsome actors and the puppy-dog love story, and the universe in which "PiP" is set is a pretty dreary one.

The school is divided along sharp lines into "richies," over-privileged offspring of wealthy families, and everybody else. The rich kids eat lunch inside in the cafeteria, while the students who are poor or rough around the edges are relegated to the outdoor rec area. It's self-imposed segregation, and there are people on both sides eager to enforce the invisible lines of division.

Heroine Andie (Ringwald) is the single child of Jack (Harry Dean Stanton), who works itinerantly but whose main vocation is staying in bed and feeling sorry for himself. His wife left him three years ago, and though he puts up a brave face for the daughter he adores, he's drowning. Andie pushes him to find full-time work and a purpose in life.

Andie is smart and, unlike Ringwald's previous roles in Hughes films, not a shrinking violent. When she's picked on my obnoxious richie girls (Kate Vernon and Gina Gershon), she fights back. Lacking funds, Andie makes her own clothes -- the source of the teasing -- with pink included in virtually every outfit.

She has a job working at a hip music store run by Iona, who's about twice Andie's age but acts as her big sister and coach. Iona has a different hairstyle every time we see her, starting with a spiked mohawk and growing more conservative as the movie goes on. She's played by Annie Potts, a charismatic and outgoing presence, virtually unrecognizable from her nerdy role in "Ghostbusters."

Andie's perpetual wingman is Duckie (Jon Cryer), the misfit of misfits, who's been her friend/hanger-on since childhood. Duckie is ravishingly in love with Andie, but to her face he makes a joke of it, talking about his undying love for her and unconditional devotion as a punchline. He dresses like a clown, with mismatched patterns and accessories, but deep down Duckie wants Andie to take him seriously.

Worlds collide when richie Blane (Andrew McCarthy) is smitten with Andie, eventually building up to a date for the prom. When Duckie realizes she's really going to go out with the enemy, he unloads on Andie, resulting in the movie's most famous line: "His name is Blane? That's a major appliance, that's not a name!"

The biggest problem with the film is that the Andie/Blane romance never really takes off. We only get to see them spend any substantive time together in two scenes: their disastrous first date, where they each visit the others' home turf and are in turn rejected by their friends, and a brief second fling where they sneak onto his horse riding club.

McCarthy's performance is ... discomforting. He smiles and stutters, trying to play a character who is inherently descent but pals around with loathsome toads like his best friend Steff, played with delicious malevolence by James Spader.  The idea is supposed to be that although Blane comes from a world where everything is taken for granted, he hasn't let it rub off on himself.

Honestly, Blane's creepy as all get out. In the film he has a serial-killer vibe, reminding me of Christian Bale in "American Psycho." His good manners and charm seem like a skillfully-constructed veil that I kept waiting to drop.

The plot wheezes and cranks to its conclusion: Blane gives into peer pressure to dump his girlfriend from "the wrong side," but they have a revelation at the prom, where Duckie, acting as her date and protector, urges her to go after Blane. As many people already know, the original ending has her choosing Duckie over Blane. But knowing that Duckie is the perpetual loser adds poignancy to his depiction.

I find the film more engaging for its little moments and its well-drawn characters than the story paces it puts them through. Spader, despite having fairly limited screen time, breathes life and subtlety into Steff that isn't immediately apparent. Steff had made numerous lecherous advances to Andie over the years and been rebuffed, and can't stand the idea of someone he sees beneath him as standing up to him.

Cryer has one outstanding scene as Duckie, where he lets down his guard of self-mockery, and steels himself to tell Andie how he really feels. But he loses his nerve and lets the other guy get his girl.

Indeed, the entire theme of the movie is about people reconciling themselves to the gap between their dreams and reality. "Pretty in Pink" may not be John Hughes' best film, but in some ways it is his most enduring. He loved to disguise his lessons as confections.