Comedy gem – Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Posted by Bill Wren

I’ve been prattling about comfort movies recently but so far have suggested only one example from the list I’m compiling. But tomorrow, Thursday, is Thanksgiving in the United States — which may go back as far as 1565, finding its start in Florida. I say “may.” I’m not saying it is so. :)

Regardless, that brings me to one of my favourite “comfort movies” of all, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a movie that is all about Thanksgiving.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

Directed by John Hughes

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is an absolute gem of a movie. One of the reasons it succeeds so well is because it is so simple and maintains its focus throughout.

Steve Martin (Neal) is heading home to Chicago for Thanksgiving. So is John Candy (Del). They are travellers with personalities at opposite ends: Neal is a prim and proper, an anal businessman, while Del is a talkative, somewhat crass low-rent guy who sells shower curtain rings. Circumstances, increasingly ludicrous yet believable, keep throwing them together. Martin’s character feels nothing but irritation about his situation and with Candy’s character while Candy’s Del is oblivious – he just goes with the flow. Together, they take planes, trains, cars, trucks and so on as they try to get home.

It’s a variation of the buddy, road-movie of film. But I think it shows why these kinds of movies are so popular when they’re well done. It is all about the characters and their relationship. In this case, Steve Martin and John Candy are a perfect pairing. I’ve always liked Martin best when he plays more of a straight character. In this film, he plays straight though this doesn’t mean he’s not comedic. On the contrary, he is more comedic because of this. Everything happens to him and his reactions are priceless.

Steve Martin, John Candy - pillow scene from Planes, Trains and AutomobilesCandy, on the other hand, has never been more lovably obnoxious. He’s the boob, the stooge. Always well-intentioned but almost everything he does causes disaster for Martin’s Neal. It’s very much a Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis kind of combination that they play. A lot of the humour is slapstick – visual – and it works well. While many comedies are amusing, I find I don’t often laugh as I watch them, though I may smile. In this movie, I laughed. And that is the litmus test for comedy.

The film, however, doesn’t work just because of its comedy. And the comedy doesn’t work in a vacuum. The characters created by writer-director John Hughes’ script, and brought to life by Martin and Candy, are what allow everything to play out successfully. It’s in the developing relationship, and the degree of depth the actors give their characters, that guides the movie forward.

The movie isn’t just about getting laughs; it has a theme which is the value of home and relationships. Thematically, it’s similar to It’s A Wonderful Life. It’s not particularly profound; it’s rather simple. But again, this simplicity is part of what allows the film to work and also part of its appeal. It’s accessible and understandable to pretty much everyone. The key in making a movie such as this is avoiding a saccharine quality. This movie, while it may have a wisp of that, doesn’t succumb and this gives it credibility. The humour, too, takes the edge off any hint of sappiness.

John Candy with curtain ring in scene from Planes, Trains and AutomobilesI think, too, there’s something worth an essay or two in the fact that movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and many Capra films like It’s A Wonderful Life) can be and are watched over and over again.

Why is something so simple so compelling? Why do other, more apparently profound films, hard to view more than once without becoming bored, while films like this can be seen again and again? As with children when they want to hear the same story over and over, certain stories, certain themes, address something we need to have repeated for one reason or another. I think it probably has something to do with truth – not the truth of tangible reality, but some truth or truths about us, people, and our relationships with one another.

If you haven’t seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles, or if it has been a while since you’ve seen it, this one is highly recommended. It’s what a comedy should be – funny. In fact the only reservation I have about the movie, the only thing I could find fault with, is the music. It sets the film far too firmly in the 1980’s. If the music were removed, the film is timeless.

But don’t worry – the music isn’t bad. Just anachronistic. And it doesn’t interfere with the enjoyment of the film. (But let me add – I loved the carousel sounding rendition of the Red River Valley song.)

On Amazon:

Alec Guinness and Ealing Studios

Posted by Bill Wren

I’ve just made some minor updates to a few reviews I wrote back in 2002. They’re all Alec Guinness movies (five of them), all done at Ealing Studios, and all come from an earlier part of the actor’s career. By the way, they’re all great.

The Alec Guinness Collection

Ealing Studios: 1949 – 1955

The Alec Guinness Collection - Anchor Bay (2002)
The Alec Guinness Collection - Anchor Bay (2002)

For some, Alec Guinness is the guy from Star Wars (Obi-Wan-Kenobi). For others, such as myself, he’s Colonel Nicholson from The Bridge on the River Kwai. But prior to these, and the many other dramatic roles he played brilliantly, Guinness was known as the comic genius of a series of British films made primarily in the 1950s at Ealing Studios. (They have their web site here.)

The Alec Guinness Collection from Anchor Bay brings together 5 of these films, all of them comic gems. (Update: This collection was brought out by Lion’s Gate in 2009 in the U.S. and Canada.)

What is interesting about these films is that Guinness’ performance isn’t that far removed from the kinds of performances he gave in dramatic roles. In other words, he knows that what makes these roles funny lies in playing them straight. It is the situation that makes the roles funny and the supporting casts, which are usually made up of character actors (often playing caricatures rather than characters).

The conceit informing most of the films is the secret life of a quiet, middle-class British man. Generally, the characters Guinness is playing are extremely British and a bit bookish perhaps. They are the sort of man no one would notice, for the most part, or, if noticed, be seen as very proper and respectable.

The Alec Guinness Collection - Lions' Gate (2009)
The Alec Guinness Collection - Lions' Gate (2009)

But each of these characters has a secret life they are living. Sometimes it’s criminal, like the caper in The Lavender Hill Mob; in the case of The Captain’s Paradise, it’s an adulterous relationship. Also in common is the secret life these small, quiet men dream of.

That is at the core of the films — the fantasies of the domesticated, perhaps even socially emasculated, male. The humour comes out of the collision between the reality and the fantasy. It develops out of the character’s attempts to hold on to his fantasy.

In most of the films, the Guinness character ends up facing a comeuppance, the triumph of reality over fantasy. However, this doesn’t always mean the character loses. In fact, even when he does lose there is something in the way the ending is handled that makes us feel he has somehow won.

Brevity and excellent pacing also characterize the films. This, combined with Guinness’ flawless performances, makes the movies work.

The Alec Guinness Collection:

  • Kind Hearts & Coronets
  • Lavender Hill Mob
  • The Man in the White Suit
  • The Captain’s Paradise
  • The Ladykillers

Links:

This cockeyed caravan: Preston Sturges defends fluff

Posted by Bill Wren

I watched Sullivan’s Travels (1941) yet again last night because, as the main character John L. Lloyd ‘Sully’ Sullivan (Joel McCrea) says:

“There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

The words, of course, are from Preston Sturges, writer and director of the movie. This movie is, for me, the best of Sturges — though it’s really hard to say one is better than another when you consider movies like The Lady Eve, The Miracle at Morgan’s Creek and others.

If you’ve ever seen the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? you may be interested in knowing Sullivan’s Travels is where that title came from. It’s the movie Sullivan, a Hollywood director of light, comedic fluff, a man with a well-to-do, somewhat privileged background, wants to make. It’s to be a serious movie about how tough and awful this life is with, “…Bodies piling up in the street.” It’s to be, “A true canvas of the suffering of humanity!”

As his producers point out, what would he know about it? Realizing the truth in what they say, he sets off to find out, decked out like a tramp (from the wardrobe department) and with only ten cents in his pocket.

Unfortunately for Sullivan, despite his best efforts he keeps ending up in Hollywood.

In the third act, however, when he has finally given up his quest, that’s when he actually stumbles into the “trouble” he’s been trying to discover.

A plot summary does little to communicate why this movie is so good.

To begin with, it’s incredibly funny with the humour finding two sources: visual (slapstick) and verbal (witty dialogue). For slapstick, see the chase scene with the kid driving the rigged up “go-cart.” For dialogue, see the scene near the beginning where Sullivan argues for his idea with the producers (“But with a little sex!”).

While very funny (and a romance to boot, with Veronica Lake), it’s a satire of movie makers, particularly of the Hollywood variety. Some even argue that Sullivan’s Travels is the best movie ever about making movies. I think, however, Sturges’ satire goes beyond movies to culture overall.

His complaint is that comedy, and fluff generally, gets dismissed because, being light and agreeable when well done, it isn’t serious, or what we consider to be serious. A history of comedy at the Oscars gives credence to his complaint. It’s ignored when it comes to the “serious” categories like Best Picture.

I think his argument is two-fold: 1) audiences, on the whole, prefer lighter films — comedy, action, etc., and 2) the people who make the serious ones about such topics as homelessness, have no idea, no experience, no real understanding of what they are making a movie about. For one thing, the very people those films are sympathetic to, and that they stand morally side by side with, are the very people they show disrespect to by dismissing the kinds of films they like.

There’s a fabulous speech prior to Sullivan heading out to “learn something about trouble,” meaning homelessness. It’s made by Robert Greig as Sullivan’s butler Burroughs. He says he doesn’t think the plan is a good one because Sullivan has no clue about what poverty is: it’s not some romantic condition to be discovered but something virulent to be avoided. I think this is Sturges saying there is often a patronizing, even parasitic element to serious films and the subjects they treat. That’s probably far too extreme a view, but I think there is an element of truth in it. It makes for an interesting question though: can something not truly lived, something only experienced in a kind of vacation mode, meaning briefly, truly be understood? How often do we bring our assumptions about what something is, assumptions that come from a very different perspective, into our assessments and treatments, such as a in a film?

Of course, the movie doesn’t come across as pontificating, as the above makes it sound. It’s great fun, incredibly funny and with a beautiful Veronica Lake, romantic too. And even if the overall sentiment and the closing lines sound a bit cornball to us, I think it’s a legitimate view and never more passionately expressed as in Sullivan’s Travels.

I’ll have to watch the Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? again because I’m now wondering if they were not only agreeing with Sturges and his argument in comedy’s favour but doing so by making Sullivan’s intended movie, one about a serious subject as done by a patronizing, uninformed fool? My guess is yes.

The Frank Oz comedies

Posted by Bill Wren

I’ve always liked the comedies of Frank Oz. In fact, I would say that of the films I watch repeatedly, Frank Oz comedies are among the ones I most watch over and over. In a sense, they are a kind of cinematic comfort food. I always enjoy them and I always feel good after having watched them.

His comedies are a bit deceptive. They seem too nice (whatever that means). They seem perhaps too slick, or too something, because they have a pleasant Hollywood gloss to them, which gives them a feeling of unreality.

But that’s really why they work the way they do. They aren’t realistic and they aren’t intended to be. They’re movies about interesting, and funny, characters in absurd situations.

What I like most about his comedies, however, is that they are funny without being mean-spirited, as many comedies tend to be. It isn’t the humour of a misanthrope but rather the humour of someone who finds life and people to be wonderful, but also wonderfully ridiculous.

Still, there is a certain (if minimal) element of darkness, even anger in them, but it is kept in abeyance. It’s never allowed to overwhelm the films; it simply serves as a root element from which to spring and inform the comedy. (An example would be In & Out, with intolerance at its core, or the satire of The Stepford Wives – not the best Oz film but certainly better than some gave it credit for.)

Ultimately, Frank Oz comedies are delightful confections that seem to laugh at us while loving us, and loving us especially for those things that make Oz laugh.

Comedies directed by Frank Oz (a partial list):

(Of the above, I think my favourite may be Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which I’ve watched so many times I’ve lost count. I can’t believe I’ve never written about it.)