Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Listen to this post:

I remember as a kid that my mom loved Planes, Trains, and Automobiles as it has just the right amount of comedic laughs that only its stars Steve Martin and John Candy could deliver, while also having enough emotional scenes to bring all kinds of feels. I’m so glad it made its way to 4K as the classic has never looked or sounded better.

via YouTube

The story follows the life of Neal Page (Steve Martin) a seriously uptight ad executive that’s trying to get home to his wife and family in Chicago to celebrate Thanksgiving. As we all know, things don’t always go according to plan, which is exactly what happens when Neal’s flight gets rerouted to Wichita with another flight not being available any time soon to get home in time.

As fate would have it, Neal runs into Del Griffith (John Candy), an annoying but loveable guy that sales shower curtain rings, on their initial flight and just happens to overhear his dilemma and offers to drive him on a cross-country trip to get him home for the holidays. From here, the film turns into a comedic series of misadventures as everything that can go wrong eventually does that will push both of them to their limits.

Even when I was a kid watching this with my mom, I could see why she enjoyed it so much as it’s one of those movies that pulls you in with its simple setting and doesn’t let you go until its emotion heavy ending (with the awesome song “Everytime You Go Away” performed by Blue Room that’s sure to melt your heart).

With all of its laughs and emotional parts, this classic has held up perfectly over the decades and will continue to do so thanks to being preserved on 4K. The visuals and audio have been touched up nicely without making it look or sound like a sterile, artificial film like some remasters tend to do. If that wasn’t enough, Paramount even managed to dig up a ton of special features that fans like myself never knew existed.

While the special features are awesome, they’re sadly presented in standard definition (480p) both on the 4K disc and the standard Blu-ray included. There’s some extras that go into the making of the film, the life of director/producer John Hughes, and a touching tribute to John Candy. The biggest and best feature of them all are the deleted and extended scenes running for well over an hour that gives insight into the characters as well as showing off more hilarious and touching scenes that add to the ones featured in the film.

Just as I did back in the day, I had a lovely time with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles as experiencing it in 4K felt like seeing it again for the first time. So be sure to grab your tickets and take off with these great comedic legends at the peak of their powers in this timeless comedy classic that will entertain and touch generations for decades to come.