Dutch

1991 / Director. Peter Faiman.

I've been on a John Hughes bender recently and it's been  awesome introducing my kids to his work. Earlier this week we watched Dutch. It was released in Australia as "Driving Me Crazy" and it tanked, big time! In fact it's notorious for being universally  panned by critics. Screw the critics. I think its gem. Ed O'Neill stars as Dutch, a tough as nails middle-class working man with a soft heart. He offers to travel interstate to collect his girlfriend's snobby, arrogant and ill-mannered son and the thus begins this amusing and often touching road trip. It very much plays out like a family-friendly version of Planes Trains and Automobiles and displays many of the same qualities and sensibilities. Ed O'Neill is wonderful as Dutch, a man much smarter than he lets on, who proffers knowledge upon his young, naive and misguided travel companion. Ethan Embry (then Ethan Randell) makes a great debut and plays the part convincingly (you want to smack him in the face). In some ways it's a coming-of-age movie and its unmistakably a John Hughes story. I get some gratification knowing that Dutch has collected a cult following over the years and it's deserved. You can't leave it to adults to fairly critique movies like this... the verdict lays with the target audience. We watched it as a family and all of us had a great time. We all laughed out loud and our adjudication finds Dutch a great family movie.  A bit of trivia for you... O'Neill and Embry teamed up again years later as the leads in a reboot tv series of Dragnet. 

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