The Great Outdoors: John Hughes Revisited

Last Updated on December 1, 2022

People forget how movies were consumed in the eighties and nineties. Now, you can stream millions of titles, which are available at the click of a button. But, back in the day, you had to rely on whatever was playing on TV or, if you were lucky, a trip to the local video store. One of the films that were ubiquitous was The Great Outdoors, a John Hughes-penned family comedy, which paired his favorite actor, John Candy, with the great Dan Aykroyd. The story of two feuding fathers spending time at a summer cabin, it has all the hallmarks of a great John Hughes movie. It has the slapstick, the silliness (the subtitled raccoons crack me up), and yes -even some heart in the unexpected climax.

Indeed, this became a staple of cable tv, and in fact, AMC still shows this movie pretty frequently. There’s something endlessly rewatchable about Hughes at his best, and given how tragically young Candy was when he passed, there are precious few of his movies to choose from. In this episode of John Hughes Revisited, which is written, narrated and edited by Matthew Hacunda, we dive into Hughes’s process, which included collaborating with director Howard Deutch, who had helmed Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful for him. We explore how the film was a decent-sized hit in theaters, but became a juggernaut thanks to video and cable tv and how dear of a collaborator Candy was to Hughes. By all accounts, once Candy passed away, the flame went out for Hughes, who mourned his loss tremendously. The Great Outdoors also offered an early role for Annette Bening, who would break out in The Grifters just two years after this was released.

Do you have fond memories of The Great Outdoors? Let us know in the comments.