Neal Page is a high-strung marketing executive. Del Griffith is goodhearted but he’s annoying. He  sells shower curtain rings. Neal and Del spend three days together trying to make it home to their families for thanksgiving – they live in the same city, but ahead of a chance encounter, a taxi cab muck-up and then bumping into each other later at the airport, they do not know each other at all. Neal and Del star in what might be my favourite ever movie.

Well, actually they are the characters. Del is portrayed by the great (and now late) John Candy.

Neal is played by banjo legend, art collector, playwright and occasional comedian Steve Martin.

And the movie – Planes, Trains & Automobiles – features great, great gags, physical comedy and silly wonderful farce, some quick-witted one-liners, some deft and daft rejoinders and then – when it all feels like it’s bubbled over and finished – there’s a sweetness that may seem sickly to some but it’s the kind of sentimentality I’ve always loved.

Perhaps this is actually where I learned about it.

I learned some great songs too – Ray Charles doing the Mess Around and one of the best cover versions of all time – Everytime You Go Away (it’s actually by Hall & Oates, but shhhh!)

John Hughes made all those classic teen comedies – and then he made this. And it’s the  greatest film ever, at least according to my current state of hyperbole. Will it be cancelled though? Is there something rotten in its state of demarcation? Was the pillows joke the one that tipped the scale?

I can’t remember when I first watched this film – probably on TV one night, or a VHS-rental. It was instantly a favourite. And I know I had a copy taped off the telly for a while. I’d fast-forward the ads and watch it on a loop after school.

There was a time when I was a huge Steve Martin fan. I mean, that time continues. I am a huge fan. But when I only knew his movies and he had that great run of 80s comedies, I was there for that. I loved them all.

John Candy, too. Love his work. In some ways I’m still getting to know it, getting to know the real genius behind it. But for me that first realisation was here, with this film. They’re both so tremendous, but Candy in particular is a virtuoso in Planes/Trains. He’s just so funny. And he also sells the sadness and the heart that is so overt.

It is, in the end, a wonderfully silly farce-with-a-heart.

That’s a tagline for life right there: A Wonderfully Silly Farce-With-A-Heart.

I watched Planes, Trains & Automobiles a year or so ago with my son. He’s loving a lot of 80s movies, comedies in particular. I had told him this was one of my favourites and we watched it together. And laughed. And loved it. I’m sure he was keen to like it based entirely on the fact that I had told him it was always one of my favourites. And it was sweet that he committed so heavily to the bit.

But I was struck, once again, with the brilliance of the script, the timing, the casting, the performances. Everything. It’s just a nearly perfect comedy.

And so truly A Wonderfully Silly Farce-With-A-Heart.
Movies of My Life started life as a series of posts on the Phantom Billstickers Facebook page