Halloween has come and gone and it’s time to move on to another holiday that people happen to enjoy in a big way no matter how people want to look at it. Thanksgiving has become a fairly controversial holiday in recent times but is still dependent on how people look the day since throughout the years nearly every holiday has been modernized in a lot of ways to reflect what people want to celebrate and how closely they want to hang on to the traditions that started each special day. Enjoying a good movie or two around the holidays is sometimes an easy and very controversy-free way to go, so I thought it’d be great to compare two of the more memorable Thanksgiving Day movies that a lot of people are bound to remember. Planes, Trains, & Automobiles is a definite classic thanks to Steve Martin and John Candy, but Son-In-Law combines the college experience, kind of, with the holidays as well thanks to Carla Gugino and Pauley Shore. While the two movies are quite different they do share the same holiday and a chance for a lot of laughs.
It’s kind of tough comparing movies from different eras since Planes, Trains, & Automobiles was released in 1987 while Son-In-Law was released in 1993. That’s not a huge span of time really, but between the 80s and the 90s, there are still a lot of differences that need to be addressed, even if I won’t be doing that here. The point is that one movie is a little more straight-laced with the type of comedy that was seen as wholesome and playful, and the other one has Pauley Shore to thank for the hilarity that occurred. Granted, both movies are a lot of fun to watch, but SIL takes on a definite edge that PTA doesn’t really have. In terms of the laugh factor, though it’s tough to say which one is the more effective since at the height of his career, which was the 90s, Shore was capable of being extremely funny provided that he didn’t take things too over the top. One could say that Encino Man was the pinnacle of his career at one point, but since he kept going, there was plenty more to see and a lot more to place side by side with his arguably best movie.
One thing that Shore could never hope to compete with however was the comedic duo of Steve Martin and John Candy. While they didn’t tend to come together in a lot of movies, for PTA they definitely brought their A-game since both men were insanely funny and showed a tremendous amount of chemistry on screen that made the movie that much better. One could say that Shore and Gugino had good chemistry as well, but for one reason or another, it felt a little more hands-off than Martin and Candy. It could have a lot to do with the type of comedy that was being displayed and the era in which each movie came out, but the fact is that both movies were great in their own right and when trying to pick a favorite it’s kind of tough. It also depends heavily on one’s age and what era they grew up in since those of us who were children back in the 80s grew up with names like Steve Martin and John Candy and discovered people like Pauley Shore and Carla Gugino as we were hitting puberty and stepping into our teen years.
The fun, wholesome family comedies and those that stretched a little further into the rude and crude were becoming less appealing than the movies that were edgy and definitely out there in a way that defied what was deemed as normal. That’s why, as a Thanksgiving movie, Son-In-Law was definitely a fun movie back in the 90s, while PTA was a classic that had already achieved legendary status when Shore was really coming into his own. When put up for a vote that would decide which movie is more popular it’s likely that this wouldn’t be quite as easy as some might think, since, with an older crowd, PTA might actually be the favorite, but with a slightly younger crowd and down on into the teens both movies might be looked at in a way that might break a lot of hearts since the comedy of decades past appears to fly over the heads of a lot of people.
But without judging anyone, it’s easy to say that if everyone watching these movies understood the context and what was going on that both movies would be embraced and enjoyed. Just for the sake of it though, in my own personal opinion, PTA would win out over SIL simply because I’m a sucker for the older comedians who knew how to make people laugh in some of the simplest ways.
Steve Martin
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