With his film Planes, Trains & Automobiles, which is about two people enduring a nightmarish road trip to get back to Chicago in time for Thanksgiving, writer/director John Hughes delivered a comedy classic that many fans watch every November. But that wasn't his only Thanksgiving road trip comedy. Four years after Planes, Trains & Automobiles, the Hughes-scripted film Dutch, directed by Peter Faiman, was released. And bombed. I'm not sure why. Not only was it a film with a basic concept so similar to Planes, Trains & Automobiles that Hughes decided to have someone else direct it, but it also starred Ed O'Neill at the height of his Married... with Children popularity. It should have been a hit. It deserved to make some money at the box office, as it's a really good, fun movie. But the audience didn't turn out for it, and to this day it's a largely obscure movie that only has a cult following. Dutch deserved better in 1991, and it deserves better thirty years later.
O'Neill is the title character, Dutch Dooley, who is in a relationship with Natalie Standish (JoBeth Williams). When Natalie was working as a barhop at a country club, she caught the eye of rich scumbag Reed Standish (Christopher McDonald, always a good villain). Not yet knowing Reed was a scumbag, Natalie fell for him... and when she got pregnant, Reed married her to avoid a scandal. After a miserable ten year marriage, Natalie and Reed got divorced, and they now have joint custody of their adolescent son Doyle (Ethan Embry, then credited as Ethan Randall). Doyle attends a boarding school in Atlanta, and was supposed to come home to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with his father - but Reed decides to go to London without notifying his son, leaving it to Natalie to handle the situation.
Doyle is well on his way to becoming a scumbag just like Reed, and is disliked by the other kids at his boarding school because he's such a moody jerk and stuck-up snob. He blames Natalie for the divorce and looks down on people who aren't rich, which is why he doesn't approve of Dutch, his mom's idiot working class slob (as Doyle would put it) boyfriend, and assumes he's just after Natalie's alimony checks. Dutch is actually a successful business owner, he just happens to have a down-to-earth approach to life, a slobbish demeanor, and can occasionally act like a "demented child". But Dutch knows that if he wants to be in Natalie's life, he needs to try to bond with Doyle as well. So he offers to fly down to Atlanta and pick Doyle up from school, then instead of flying back to Chicago with him they'll rent a car and drive home so they'll have time to get to know each other on the road.
Dutch and Doyle's first meeting doesn't go well. Dutch gets shot with a pellet gun, Doyle has to be tied up to be carried out of his dorm. But they hit the road together nonetheless, with Doyle tossing out a steady stream of insults. Some viewers may be put off by the fact that it takes a long time for Doyle to become a likeable character; Roger Ebert even pointed this out as one of the film's flaw in his negative review. He is an insufferable little twerp for a long stretch of the film's 108 minute running time... but the upside here is that Dutch can give back as good as Doyle can dish out, and isn't afraid to put the kid in his place. But of course, the story here is that Dutch and Doyle do come to care about each other, Doyle is a jerk because he's hurting, and Dutch will eventually chip away at the kid's icy exterior to get down to the warm heart hidden in there.
Of course, the road trip is a disaster even beyond Dutch and Doyle not getting along for a while. As it usually the case with this sort of movie, the car they start out in doesn't make it all the way home. They lose their vehicle, they lose their money, but they have reasons for not calling Natalie for help, reasons Roger Ebert didn't believe but I can go along with. So they catch a bus, they have to hitchhike, they spend with people who have nothing, opening Doyle's eyes to the world. They also encounter a pair of prostitutes, played by Ari Meyers and E.G. Daily. (The movie is PG-13, so don't be too worried about the content of their scenes.) Decades later, Embry told Adam Green and Joe Lynch on their podcast The Movie Crypt that shooting the scenes with Meyers and Daily was a momentous occasion for him.
I understand why Planes, Trains & Automobiles is more popular than Dutch, you can't beat the duo of Steve Martin and John Candy, and I'm not saying Dutch should be the more popular one instead. I'm just saying Dutch deserves more love than it's gotten. Although I didn't see it in the theatre, like most people didn't, I did rent it as soon as I saw it on the shelf at a local video store. It looked appealing to me, and it starred that funny guy from Married... with Children. I was probably 8 years old at the time, and I loved the movie. I've revisited it from time to time throughout the years, and have continued to enjoy it. Thirty years after its release, it still holds up. It's a really sweet story in the end, and there are plenty of amusing moments on the way there.
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