The Friday Link for 11/25/16

There are not many Thanksgiving only oriented movies.  There are some with Thanksgiving in them, but they're usually set ups for Christmas.  TV shows are more likely to have Thanksgiving stand alone episodes, with the gold standard being either the Cheers' Thanksgiving episode with the food fight or WKRP in Cincinnati's turkey skydivers, both of which I've featured on Thanksgiving posts from years gone by.

I'm surprised movie studios don't do more Thanksgiving features.  Probably because they're dated after the weekend and releasing it before Halloween would lead to a bad opening, and a bad run.  Looking at the movie website Box Office Mojo, since 1986, there have only been 19 total movies where Thanksgiving was the theme of the move, and most of them were serious dramas or major box office bombs.  Only a few Thanksgiving comedies exist and the best of those is a Thanksgiving tradition for my family - Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

The story is more about the horrors of business/holiday travel, with an ad executive (Played by Steve Martin) trying to get from New York to Chicago for Thanksgiving, and the interaction he has with a fellow traveler, a salesman (played by John Candy).  To say it captures the nightmare travel can be is an understatement, but it's also a very endearing film, with a great message of coming home to family, and bonding with people you might not ever meet, if not for unique circumstances, all wrapped up in some real classic movie comedy.  My theory is the acting and holiday travel element are what kept this movie from getting lost.  It opened a few weeks after Less Than Zero and The Running Man, opened the Wednesday of Thanksgiving week against Three Men and a Baby, and had to compete in a December with Throw Momma From the Train, Wall Street, Empire of the Sun, Raw, Broadcast News, Moonstruck, and Good Morning Vietnam.  The holiday movies of 1987 were insane!

The only problem with the movie is the white privilege it portrays (wealthy executive from Chicago who has a lovely family, great house and a lot of money might miss ONE holiday.  The horror!) but Candy's Del Griffith makes Steve Martin's Neal Page see the world a little more realistically, and there's a nice pay off in the end.  One warning, if you do see the film with your family, you'll want to skip past a very funny, profanity laced scene at the rental car counter in the St. Louis airport.  You've been warned!

Here are some of my favorite scenes from the film.  Enjoy and have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!