Here is a film containing some heartfelt but often quite treacly and solemn obsequies to the late John Candy, almost as if he died a few days ago, with stirring, sad music running almost all the way through. There’s an amazing lineup of collaborators and stars, and it’s good to see Candy’s uniquely likable and buoyant screen personality, but the tone borders on the stultifyingly reverential.
Candy was the much loved Canadian actor and comic who was a star graduate of Toronto’s Second City comedy troupe and its small screen offshoot SCTV; he was a contemporary of Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara and Bill Murray, and went on to star in movies such as Stripes, Uncle Buck and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. His death in 1994 at 43 was due to a heart attack caused by his weight issues, and drinking and smoking (though the movie rather prissily overlooks his cocaine use).
The film’s sub-title is taken from the wounded, dignified speech from Candy’s maladroit character in Planes, Trains and Automobiles after he has just been cruelly insulted by Steve Martin: “I like me, my wife likes me, my customers like me, ’cause I’m the real article.” The documentary as a whole is perhaps a little too ready to conflate that sweet character with Candy himself, who was a little more complex, more pessimistic and fatalistic after the traumatising death of his father from a heart attack at the age of 35 (when Candy himself was just five), and knowing that his successful career in comedy movies depended on being big.
Candy got his break when he was cast by Steven Spielberg in 1941, and maybe he could have been a Spielbergian figure in cinema; instead, the director that took him up was John Hughes, who cast him in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck and many more films. But it was Ron Howard who tapped further his sunny good nature by casting him opposite Tom Hanks in Splash, and there was some very interesting bromance chemistry between them.
Candy had a natural face for the movies – open, ingenuous, boyish and trusting – although I left this documentary suspecting that nothing he did for the big screen was as funny as the appalling character he did on SCTV: Yellowbelly, the cowardly cowboy who actually shoots a small child in the back.
John Candy: I Like Me is on Prime Video from 10 October.
