Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Episode 147: Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)

Theme: Candy Land — A Month of John Candy
Hosts: Oz & Curtis

This week, Oz and Curtis hop aboard the most chaotic travel itinerary ever conceived — a cinematic mash-up of Deadpool & Wolverine, Little Shop of Horrors, Footloose, and Spirit Halloween: The Movie. John Hughes pulls triple duty (again) to deliver a buddy comedy that somehow turns sinus problems, shower-curtain rings, and highway-speed combustion into a heartfelt holiday classic.

Join your two favorite travel-adjacent scholars as they unpack:

• How Neil Page is basically every stressed-out business traveler who’s one delay away from fighting an airport kiosk.

• Why Del Griffith is the most lovable menace alive — part salesman, part philosopher, part walking TSA violation.

• The rental-car meltdown that drops 19 F-bombs in 60 seconds and still somehow feels… therapeutic.

• How the wrong-way freeway run becomes both the funniest and most horrifying near-death experience ever filmed.

• The twist that reveals this isn’t just a road-trip movie — it’s a secret gut-punch about grief, connection, and found family.

From frozen dogs to beer-soaked bedding, from Flintstones sing-alongs to a sedan roasted like a Thanksgiving turkey, Oz and Curtis break down why this movie still hits as hard as it did in ’87. It’s warm, it’s chaotic, it’s sincere, and it somehow sticks the landing with a freeze-frame and a Paul Young cover.

Final Verdict

Oz — A perfect trip
Curtis — 10 out of 10 on TripAdvisor
Both — Still unclear how that car made it from St. Louis to Springfield while fully on fire.