Key Takeaways

• Thanksgiving Movies: John Hughes directed the iconic Thanksgiving film, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, in 1987.
• Dutch Overview: The 1991 film Dutch features a young Ethan Embry and Ed O’Neill in a comedic road trip story.
• Box Office Performance: Despite its quality, Dutch was a box office failure, grossing only $4.6 million.
• Cultural Impact: The film has become difficult to find, with limited home media releases and no current streaming options.

John Hughes is responsible for the greatest Thanksgiving movie of all time, 1987’s poignant Planes, Trains & Automobiles. This Steve Martin and John Candy-led classic has become a perennial favorite and a movie many people have likely been revisiting this week. However, about four years later, in 1991, John Hughes made another Thanksgiving movie in the same vein, Dutch. Despite being a solid film with a recognizable cast, it’s hard to track down nowadays. With Thanksgiving approaching, that’s unfortunate!

Dutch is very much in the spirit of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, pairing a snooty white-collar kid with a more down-to-earth blue-collar guy. The twist here is that the white-collar character is a child, with Ethan Embry (then known as Ethan Randall) playing a prep-school kid who ends up on a long journey home for Thanksgiving with his mom’s new boyfriend, Dutch, played by Ed O’Neill.

At the time, O’Neill was enjoying success from TV’s Married…with Children. Known for portraying the boorish Al Bundy, this role was an attempt to transition O’Neill into a movie star, alongside his memorable appearance in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. For various reasons, Dutch was a box office dud, grossing only about $4.6 million, although it became popular on home video.

Dutch is an entertaining film, with O’Neill’s Dutch Dooley reminiscent of the characters John Candy often played for Hughes. It wouldn’t be surprising if the movie was initially written for Candy. He’s a funny blue-collar character who is also street-smart and tough. The film culminates in him punching out the villain—something you’d typically see Candy do (like when he punched the drunk clown in Uncle Buck).

The chemistry between O’Neill and young Embry is excellent. About twelve years later, they re-teamed on a short-lived remake of the classic cop show Dragnet. O’Neill would eventually star on ABC’s Modern Family, but despite his fame, Dutch never really got rediscovered. It had brief releases on DVD and Blu-ray but is now out-of-print and isn’t available for legal streaming. It’s not commonly discussed within John Hughes’s body of work since he only wrote and produced the film; it was directed by Peter Faiman of Crocodile Dundee. Nevertheless, it definitely feels like a Hughes movie, featuring heavy use of the band Yello on the soundtrack (who also contributed to the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off soundtrack).

So why is Dutch so hard to find? The movie is likely owned by Disney since it was initially released by 20th Century Fox; however, it’s possible that rights have reverted back to the Hughes Estate. It would be an obvious choice for companies like Arrow, Kino Lorber, or Shout Factory to pick up, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Does anyone remember Dutch? Let us know in the comments!