Dutch

Dutch Dooley is working class, blunt, and has never met his girlfriend's son. The boy, Doyle, is at boarding school and chooses to spend Thanksgiving with his father rather than see his mother. Dutch intervenes and offers to drive him from Georgia to Chicago. The trip will take two days. Doyle insults him from the first minute, tries to run, and eventually they are both broke. The film is less interested in fathers and sons than in class. Doyle was raised on his father's money and treats everyone around him as staff, while Dutch tries to show him that being rich is not a virtue and keeps getting it wrong. The section at the shelter changes the tone abruptly. Peter Faiman directed from a John Hughes screenplay. Ed O'Neill plays Dutch and Ethan Embry plays Doyle. Hughes had already written Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Home Alone by this point, and the shape is familiar: a road, two mismatched people and a holiday. Who it is for: anyone who likes early nineties family comedy and Hughes scripts. Who it is not for: anyone wanting subtlety. The slapstick is crude, the boy is unbearable for a long stretch, and his change of heart arrives too fast in the script.