Planes, Trains & Automobiles

It is perfectly cast and soundly constructed, and all else flows naturally. Steve Martin and John Candy don't play characters; they embody themselves. Read full review

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the ultimate Thanksgiving film: John Hughes understood that it's all about the buildup. No matter if your journey is filled with near-death experiences, cars going up in flames, punches to the face and other disasters – getting to enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends make the odyssey worth it. Everything else is just turkey. Read full review

It’s a great comedy, and a deeply touching one, too. Read full review

What John Hughes, who wrote, directed and produced the film, has done here is make a weirdly inventive, off kilter comedy out of the horrors of modern travel. And in the process, he's also managed to make the funniest road movie since Lost in America. Read full review

I feel like we catch a brief glimpse here of an amazing filmmaker who never quite existed. Read full review

Hughes' savvy notwithstanding, the appeal of Planes is due to Martin and Candy's comically controlled, ever-ingratiating performances. Read full review

With its deft blend of hilarity and humanity, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is Hughes' most satisfying work. Read full review

A warm, mature offering from Hughes, with Martin's restraint a perfect counterpoint to Candy's enormous (and enormously amusing) fooling around. You'll find sympathy here, but just as many calamitous antics as you'd expect in any Hughes vehicle. Read full review

It is, of course, always a pleasure to watch Martin's steam-gauge face register his rising internal pressures and to witness his exquisitely expressed blowoffs. But Candy offers even more insinuating delights. Covering lonely need with empty gab, insecurity with a not entirely trustworthy savvy, he is the most dangerous kind of pest, the type who worms rather than blusters his way into your life. Read full review

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is one of those rare movies that manages to mingle outrageous comedy and light drama in such a way that we aren't repulsed or offended by its simplicity and occasional mawkishness. It's a fine cinematic treat that doesn't demand much from a viewer, but gives back a lot, both in terms of laughter and good feeling. Read full review

What a relief! John Hughes has decided to quit being the patron saint of sniveling teens and to turn his sympathetic gaze on sniveling adults. Read full review

A couple of overgrown brats seems an appropriate focus for John The Breakfast Club Hughes first adult movie, but if his direction is slick, his script lacks wit and perception. Essentially, it's the stars' keenly observed nuances of character that make this comedy amiable enough. Read full review

John Hughes has come up with an effective nightmare-as-comedy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Disaster-prone duo of Steve Martin and John Candy repeatedly recall a contemporary Laurel & Hardy as they agonizingly try to make their way from New York to Chicago by various modes of transport. Read full review

There is no denying the craft of either Martin or Candy, however, and since they are the film, it will undoubtedly find its audience faster than any one of us can get from New York to Chicago. Read full review

Mr. Martin and Mr. Candy are an easy twosome to watch even with marginal material, though, and the film is never worse than slow. Read full review

With a concept as thin as this, Planes, Trains and Automobiles could have easily become a repetitious bore. Instead, producer-director-writer Hughes infuses his film with an appealing sense of sentiment and humanity--not to mention many hilarious scenes. Read full review

The story itself is timeless and almost always funny. Of the many road trip comedies out there, Planes, Trains and Automobiles ranks among the very best. Read full review

There are many periods when the two men are traveling and you feel the need to fast-forward the movie to another scene. This is not a great comedy but it's a string of funny highlights. Read full review

Pretty dispensable, though it has one of the best homosexual-panic gags I've ever seen. Read full review

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the movie equivalent of a tired stand-up comic's air-travel routine. It strikes some resonant chords indeed, but it never quite leaves the ground, either. And given the stars here, that's a real bungle. [25 Nov 1987, p.D1]

Planes, Trains and Automobiles puts on the miles without many smiles. The journey hardly seems worth the trouble. [27 Nov 1987, p.6]

Teenmeister John Hughes, begatter of Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, has permitted Planes, Trains and Automobiles to be promoted as his first "adult" feature, but it's actually a re-run of a movie he wrote in 1983, National Lampoon's Vacation, another primitive cartoon for the kinds of adults who find Neil Simon too sophisticated. [27 Nov 1987]