This is not to suggest I felt compelled to throw in my lot with the parents and other authority figures in Sixteen Candles<\/i>, The Breakfast Club<\/i>, Weird Science<\/i>, or Ferris Bueller<\/i>, since they ran the gamut from totally clueless to wary but still capable of being bamboozled by people who aren\u2019t old enough to vote. In order to begin seeing the adults in Hughes\u2019 work as human beings in their own right, it\u2019s necessary to look past the quartet of films that made his reputation to the only one on his CV headlined by two middle-aged men, Planes, Trains & Automobiles<\/i>, which recently marked its 30<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> anniversary with the requisite Blu-ray upgrade.<\/span><\/p>\n With no teenagers in sight, the audience for PT&A <\/i>is asked to identify with Steve Martin\u2019s Neal Page, a marketing man on business in New York City who just wants to fly to his tastefully appointed home in the Chicago suburbs to be with his family for Thanksgiving. Neither Hughes nor Martin make it easy for the viewer to completely align themselves with Neal, though, since he\u2019s a prickly customer, quick to lob cutting remarks instead of adopting a conciliatory tone. Then again, he is<\/i> traveling around the holidays, which was stressful even before the TSA stepped in to make air travel more unpleasant, so his testiness with the unhelpful customer service reps he encounters is understandable.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s even possible to share Neal\u2019s initial disdain for John Candy\u2019s aggressively upbeat shower-ring salesman Del Griffith, who unwittingly trips him up right at the start of his journey. As much of an over-sharer as Del turns out to be, though, he\u2019s also a good man to have in your corner when the chips are down, a point of view Neal is slow to come around to. No matter what fate throws at them \u2014 and Hughes makes sure fate has a lot of ammo \u2014 Del has a fix for both of them that works out better than what Neal comes up with on his own.<\/span><\/p>\n A seasoned traveler who all but lives on the road, Del accurately predicts they won\u2019t be landing at O\u2019Hare, which has been snowed in, and upon their arrival in Wichita correctly surmises their flight will be canceled and arranges accommodations for the night. When the train they board the next day breaks down near Jefferson City, Del knows their best option to get to St. Louis is by bus, even as he warns Neal his \u201cmood\u2019s probably not going to improve much.\u201d When Neal\u2019s rental car turns out to be missing, Del offers to share his. And when it\u2019s time to spend another night in a motel, it\u2019s Del who breaks out the array of snacks and miniature liquor bottles. Then, when his burnt-out husk of a rental car is impounded on the final leg of their journey, Del gets them a lift in the back of the tractor trailer that delivers them to Chicago and an El station that can finally get Neal home.<\/span><\/p>\n Utilizing the sturdy road-trip format that served him in good stead in his screenplay for National Lampoon\u2019s Vacation<\/i> four years earlier, Hughes makes getting from Wichita to Chicago by land seem like a challenge on the order of the return of Odysseus to Ithaca. Along the way, our heroes encounter several familiar faces from Hughes\u2019 films, both past and future, starting with Lyman Ward (Ferris Bueller\u2019s oblivious father) as Neal\u2019s fellow marketing executive who has a more laid-back attitude about holiday travel. Also from Ferris<\/i>, erstwhile economics teacher Ben Stein pops up as the airline representative who laconically announces the flight cancellation that throws Neal\u2019s already-precarious plans into a tailspin, and Edie McClurg is the bubbly rental-car clerk who is on the receiving end of his profanity-laden rant when he reaches the end of his tether. (The number of times Neal spits the F-word at Ed Rooney\u2019s secretary in the space of one minute: 18.) And looking ahead to his next film, the semi-autobiographical She\u2019s Having a Baby<\/i>, Hughes cast Kevin Bacon in a wordless cameo as the eagle-eyed New Yorker who beats Neal to a taxi, the first form of transportation denied him.<\/span><\/p>\n
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