Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) poster
1987 · comedy

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Directed by John Hughes1h 32m1987
ElsewhereIMDb7.6180kRT93%Metacritic72TMDB7.32k
  • cosy
  • brisk
  • gentle
  • redemptive
  • tender
  • intimate
Movie DNA

Cosy, kinetic, gentle comedy, grounded in texture. Redemptive, intimate, tender, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

An irritable marketing executive, Neal Page, is heading home to Chicago for Thanksgiving when a number of delays force him to travel with a well meaning but overbearing shower curtain ring salesman, Del Griffith.

Our read · Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) reads as a cosy, kinetic, grounded comedy entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, tender in temperature, redemptive in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
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The shape of Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want Thanksgiving road-trip chaos that melts into genuine buddy warmth.

ends warmyou’ll feel glowing aftersteady all the waygrips by minute 6attention 3/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-updrug usecringe humiliation

Skip it tonightFrantic travel misery and bathroom humiliation comedy are not your mood.

If Planes, Trains and Automobiles is your film
DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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