John Hughes’ 1987 road comedy is one of those films that gets funnier every time you watch it – and hits harder the older you get.
Directed by the man behind The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, it marked a deliberate shift away from teen comedies and toward something a little more human.
The premise is deceptively simple: a tightly wound ad executive (Steve Martin) is trying to get home to his family for Thanksgiving (not Christmas as GB once believed!). Standing between him and his front door is a series of transport disasters – and one very large, very enthusiastic shower curtain ring salesman named Del Griffith (John Candy).
It starts as a comedy and ends as something else entirely.
The film earned a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, a place in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies collection, and was cited by both Martin and Candy as one of their favourites they’d ever made. It’s easy to see why. Beneath the chaos and the one-liners is a genuinely warm story about loneliness, patience, and what it means to be someone’s friend.
GB and AJ dig into it on this week’s episode – the performances, the behind-the-scenes story, and why a film from 1987 still feels like it has something real to say.
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