DUTCH: A Hidden Thanksgiving Gem
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A John Hughes film about a mismatched pair who encounter a series of wild misadventures as they traverse cross country to be home in time for Thanksgiving and, through it all, develop a wonderful bond with one another. If you said PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES you would be…wrong. The film in question is actually the 1991 cult classic DUTCH.
Okay, so I may have fudged the details a little bit as this is not a Hughes directorial effort (Peter Faiman helmed this one) but one of four screenplays done in between the first and second entries in the HOME ALONE franchise and begins to showcase a change in the career trajectory of the renowned filmmaker. For some, John Hughes was the voice of teen comedy with iconic films like SIXTEEN CANDLES, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, and WEIRD SCIENCE (yeah, I said it) but, as he got older, he began to attempt films that skewed to a more mature audience like PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES and SHE’S HAVING A BABY. An ever changing creative, Illinois’ favorite son started a third phase of his career after the success of HOME ALONE, becoming the go-to guy for kid-friendly fare with movies like BEETHOVEN (written under the pseudonym Edmond Dantès), DENNIS THE MENACE, FLUBBER, and BABY’S DAY OUT.
If you put every John Hughes movie into a blender, you would get DUTCH. He’s a distillation of Buck Russell, Del Griffith, all with a splash of Clark Griswold. Meanwhile, his potential stepson Doyle Standish (a nod to Molly Ringwald’s character in THE BREAKFAST CLUB) is what Kevin McCallister would have probably turned into if his parents hadn’t left him home alone for Christmas. This feels like Hughes in transition: utilizing more adult humor in certain scenes while not being afraid to play up the schmaltz that made HOME ALONE a gigantic success.
The plot is pretty standard fare: a man drives cross country with his girlfriend’s son, trying to get to know him. But Hughes manages a lot with that small bit of plot as does his entire cast as, including the titular character played by Ed O’Neill, bring their A-Game. O’Neill was at the height of his powers on TV with MARRIED…WITH CHILDREN on its fifth season and the viewership growing more and more over time. Even though he was a raging success on television, being Al Bundy didn’t open the door for many film opportunities, let alone leading man roles. With this film, O’Neill gets to shed some of that Al Bundy baggage and play a character who has a lot of dimension and warmth.
His counterpart, Doyle (played by Ethan Embry—going by Ethan Randall at the time), walks the tightrope of being obnoxious and endearing and he walks it extremely well. Embry has had a long career of being characters that I’ve loved to see on screen: A recent rewatch of THAT THING YOU DO showcases his incredible ability to steal a scene with barely any effort. Embry and O’Neill have an easy chemistry with one another, their banter is one of the charms that works extremely well in DUTCH.
Doyle is the one with the most growth and that’s where Hughes showcases some of his strongest writing. Starting out obnoxious and constantly sneering at everyone, the screenwriter plays on and twists cliches of other films to soften him and allow him to see beyond himself. The writer knows how to tug on the heartstrings without getting extremely cliche. The moment Doyle (spoilers) decides that he does love his mother is extremely effective.
The supporting cast is a murderers’ row of talent, even if they’re underwritten almost to the point of walking tropes. Christopher McDonald (who will forever be Shooter McGavin in my mind) is Doyle’s father (the stereotypical rich douche) and he crushes it, while JoBeth Williams gets the slightly thankless role of Doyle’s mother who occasionally feels more like a plot device than an actual character. We even get the briefest appearance of the wonderful E.G. Daily as a thieving “call girl” who puts another obstacle on the road for the two leads. Under Faiman’s direction, everyone is giving it their all—even when there isn’t much to work with.
DUTCH also pushes a message of class warfare between the two leads. Dutch being of a “lower status” than Doyle is mentioned frequently but is never really played as a joke. Other movies would push Dutch and Doyle’s differences in wealth as a series of bits to the point of absurdity, but Hughes knows how to thread the needle and manages to make it a moment of character growth for Doyle to realize that money truly isn’t everything. Is it hokey? Absolutely. Does it work? Definitely.
With the success of HOME ALONE in theaters and MARRIED…WITH CHILDREN on TV, the pairing of two huge talents should have made for a box office hit. Unfortunately, it didn’t and the film was a critical and financial flop. It was even made into a punchline at least twice on MARRIED…WITH CHILDREN. Luckily over time it found its audience.
I must have seen the VHS box of this movie every single time I went to the video store. It’s hard to get the image of Ethan Embry putting Ed O’Neill in a headlock out of your mind, especially when you’ve passed by it countless times in those aisles, and so I finally rented it. When I first saw it, I may have been too young to get it and therefore I didn’t find it as enjoyable at the time. That changed as I got a bit older and rediscovered it.
In the early days of Comedy Central, when they would show the same movie at least 30 times a month, I was glued to my couch or sitting in my bedroom rewatching DUTCH. Confession Time: I saw this before I saw PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES and, in some respects, I like it a bit more. There’s just something about the easygoing nature of Ed O’Neill that puts me at ease and really helps put me in the mood to enjoy Thanksgiving. It falls into what I’ve often labeled as “Comedy Central Classics”: films that found a second life and that I watched consistently thanks to the programmers at Comedy Central.
I know that the pickings are a tad slimmer than Christmas, but if you need something to watch this Thanksgiving that will give you that feeling of joy and love that you get when you see Macaulay Culkin running to hug Catherine O’Hara, then I highly recommend DUTCH. It’s funny, heartwarming, and endearing. It works for adults and younger audiences who can shake off their cynicism for one day in November.
