I fell in love with John Candy at the moment I saw him serve the pancakes in spade size in “Uncle Buck.” John Hughes wrote the part of Uncle Buck specifically for Candy, and Uncle’s affection for his siblings and nephews were also true in real life.
Now, over 30 years after Candy’s death in 1994, comes a new documentary ”John Candy: I like me“Full of fun anecdotes about a guy who practically everyone liked and also what that guy cost him. Directed by Colin HanksThe Premiere on the opening evening of 2025 Toronto International Film Festival with Hanks, producer Ryan Reynolds and Candy’s children, Co-Executive producers Chris Candy and Jennifer Candy-Sullivan, on stage for a question and answer after screening.
If you already loved John Candy, this doctor will make you love him even more. If you were born after his time, it will be a wonderful introduction. Still, how the doctor remains on his undisturbed celebration of Candy’s life and work but rushes but rushes through his brief examination of his psyche prevents it from being a total knockout.
From Candy’s SCTV Improv buddies – Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Dave Hall, Andrea Martin – to Hollywood collaboration partners like Steve Martin, Tom Hanks and Mel Brooks, to close friends Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, is the abundance. A history of the Toronto -skis comedy scene is run as a comfortable subsplan.
Some of the most memorable comments come from Bill Murray, which is the first and last person to show up. At the premiere, Reynolds said that Murray was the most difficult person to book. After many unmatched calls and even Ghosting a fixed date, Reynolds finally got Murray to agree when he sent him a video of his then two -year -old son who said: “Do the interview.”
Murray sets up one of the film’s stories: John Candy was practically a saint, and it is difficult to find people who have something negative to say. The film is leaning into this and focuses mainly on celebrating Candy, which appeared in more than 30 films and died of a heart attack alone in his hotel room on a shoot in Durango, Mexico. He was 43 years old. We learn early on that the candy’s own father, which he strongly resembled, died of a heart attack when John was only five. He lived with fear that he would also meet an early grave as his father.
The many interviews from family, friends and colleagues form the film’s skeleton, along with clips from Candy’s extensive filmography from the mid-1970s. The archive films of Candy – on sets and at home with their children – give the movie vitality, and the intimate, relaxed settings where interviewees tell memories about the man who left his lives soon develops home and keeps the film together visually. The point includes heartbreaking music that is sung by a ready Cynthia Erivo, recorded especially for the film. It is a sincere love party, hot without being cloying.
But Hank’s other documentary function has a classic problem: it lacks editorial discipline. In other words, it’s too long. The reason is a good problem to have – for many beloved stars who rarely give interviews and really wanted to talk about sweets. For example, it now has a 40-something Macaulay Culkin, who is reminiscent of paternal care and Bond which he knew with candy at a time when his own father and manager neglected the child megasts, have some of the most interesting things to say about sweets, but not shown until the last act. But the latest interview with Dan Akroyd, although he was nice to see him on the camera again, added very little to Candy’s story and could have been left on the cutting room floor.
Too often the tension between WHO Candy was for others and who he was for himself gets lost and twisted away from “I like me” -etos. (That line comes from another John Hughes movie, “Plan, Train and Cars”, where Candy plays a lovable loser opposite Steve Martin.)
One of the places where the film reaches in addition to simply gathering the band again is when Candy’s son Chris says that during his father’s last year “his mind was overweight,” complicated the story that Candy was unfairly lumped in with “Living Fast and Dying Young.” At the top of eating their feelings – not to mention smoking and drinking them – candy, according to his son, a personal trainer and others who are part of the doctor, more and more suffered from anxiety and panic attacks as his career subsided and his responsibility as a businessman grew. Conan O’Brien, who remembers when the Harvard Lampoon staff brought candy to Campus, adds a prominent point: “The danger of this activity is that it is very unhealthy for people.”
What the film eventually draws is that it was not only sweets that killed him, but a toxic combination of anxiety, stress and genetic predisposition to heart disease and obesity. In the end, the film places Candy’s legacy as one of a decent guy and a talented artist who, as his daughter Jennifer says, “took care of people”, on and by set. But equally important is how it discovers the long shade thrown by a five -year -old boy’s way of dealing with a parent’s traumatic loss.
Many interviewed, such as Catherine O’hara and Candy’s “Splash” comrade Tom Hanks, said neither action or not, Candy was extremely present when you were with him. Still, the film does not give enough room for us to feel that presence. Viewers do not get much chance to sit with the information about Candy’s life before the film moves on to the next anecdote. One longs to see a whole stage with candy in action on the screen or in a home video, rather than just excerpts. Nor was it enough that sweets spoke to themselves, rather than people told us how good he was.
The interviews from the SCTV crew, which had a front seat for sweets before and after he became a star, were the most convincing. The document would have benefited by more by Catherine O’hara, which is shown in the film which gave a moving tribute at Candy’s funeral in 1994, whose comment felt particularly rich but truncated.
In the end, Hanks delivers a good, but not good, portrait of a lovable guy whose flaws took him out – an ordinary guy with extraordinary talent who remains one of the best comedic actors of the 1900s.
Rating: B-
“John Candy: I Like Me” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. It will flow on Prime Video starting on October 10.
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