Directed By Colin Hanks

Starring – John Candy, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin

The Plot – Explores the life and legacy of the iconic funnyman John Candy, who died of a heart attack in 1994, at the age of 43.

Rated PG-13 for smoking, some strong adult language, drug material and suggestive material.

John Candy: I Like Me – Official Trailer | Prime Video

POSITIVES

Being a hardcore fan of Candy’s since birth, there has not quite been a celebrity death that has impacted me as deeply and significantly as his, and though a documentary about his legacy seems tragically long overdue, considering Candy passed away over thirty years ago, Hanks is undoubtedly the right person to shoulder such an immense outlining on the industry, evoking a compassionately heartfelt and bitterly heartbreaking film about a man who touched the lives of many people in such a short time on this planet. Hanks masterfully achieves this objective by vividly capturing both sides of the respective spectrum in Candy’s life, between the home video footage, abundance of photography, and family speaking guests of his rarely captured and most intimately personal moments, but also the abundance of memorable movie scenes and prestigious speaking guests from his career as a gentle entertaining everyman, and this bigger picture not only certifies the rarity of such a person being mutually admired among his many peers, without a single one of them with even the slightest nit-picking negative to say about his charmingly protective character, but also seems to effectively illustrate the brief lifespan of his time in front of the public eye, with many of questions surrounding his final days that have seemingly went unaddressed until now. Because of such, “I Like Me” certainly spends more of its time paying respects to the larger than life talent, with much of its first hour embodying a conventionally uplifting tone for most documentaries pertaining to a celebration of life towards one person, but surprisingly also features an abundance of dramatic conflict towards the third act of the narrative, that conveyed the internalized suffering to his publicized obesity and ensuing anxieties that developed from having to live through his father dying of heart failure at such a young age in John’s life, constantly forcing him to stare an unsettling inevitability in the eyes, with regards to his murky future prospects, all the while presenting an endearingly humanistic portrait of vulnerability that never relents on the bittersweet resonance of Hanks’ vividly detailed underlining. Hanks also doesn’t sacrifice style for compelling substance, as his film features the kind of uniquely magnetic editing schemes that immerse audiences into framing this as an everlasting saga continuously transpiring on-screen, both with momentary glitches in the transitioning from one speaking guest to the other, as well as clever stitching in the visual cues of aforementioned cinematic stock footage, that seamlessly blur the line of detectability from each of Candy’s respective worlds, while showcasing the penetrably personal appeal in much of Candy’s material on-screen doubling for the kind of conflicts that he faced off-screen with his children. It crafts an insightfully honest and upfront touch of a parallel to fictionalized cinema that effortlessly cements newfound meaningful merit to the openly embracing vulnerabilities that Candy explored in so many unconventionally colorful characters, throughout a career of memorable favorites, but beyond that prophesizes several aftershocks in the uncovered revelations that Hanks conjures with both patience, commitment, and obviously respect to the tasteful approach in sifting through so many of the actor’s most sensitive areas, making it all the easier to love and celebrate Candy’s empathetic brand of comedy, ironically from the perspective of someone like Hanks, who was only a child when meeting John, yet someone who supplanted such an evidentially irreplaceable impact to him. Hanks makes the refreshing decision not to involve himself in the matters of the storytelling between guests, instead leaving ample opportunity for his father, Tom Hanks, as well as Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Dan Akroyd, Catherine O’ Hara, Macaulay Culkin, and a litany of others to articulate uniquely just what John meant to them. The hardest hitting among them, at least for my money, comes from Culkin, who describes John as a fill-in father figure on the set of “Uncle Buck”, during a time when Culkin’s own father was extorting his son’s building finances, and the poignant recounting from the now adult actor has an underlining of tears as he describes his on-screen uncle as “A Unicorn”, on his way to making the argument that Candy should be celebrated as the quintessential John Hughes actor of the time, for starring in as many as seven movies (Macaulay incorrectly listed it as nine) under the umbrella of the deceased writer and director who mentioned Candy as a best friend and accomplice of his on so many of his scripts. On top of this, the film also serves as an opportunity for Cynthia Erivo, whose new version of the Paul Young song “Every Time You Go”, from Candy’s film, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”, is covered by the “Wicked” leading lady, during the most tenderly heartbreaking of the film. Erivo has always been one of the most giftedly versatile performers of this or any age, but the tenderness and monumental emotion that she evokes to such a sentimental favorite, breeds new life into a song pertaining to the pain of having to say goodbye, serving not only as the audible exclamation point to our unrelenting will to say goodbye once more to Candy, but also further proof of Erivo’s adaptability as an artist to absorb and enhance any kind of song or genre that she chooses to approach.

NEGATIVES

Even with so much success in Hanks telling this story, there are still a couple of glossed over aspects in the direction of its narrative and ensuing storytelling that left slightly more to be desired, particularly in the undebatable hand that Hollywood had towards Candy maintaining his own obesity, in order to receive the cinematic opportunities that remained consistent for him. While the film does touch into this reality during one of the many talking points of the mid-80’s arc, before Candy received universal acclaim on “Uncle Buck”, that took his fame to a whole other level, it’s crucially unexplored, without anything even remotely resembling deserved satisfaction on the inclusion, and while the idea to explore controversies and dramatic moments in a candid documentary about such a memorable figure might alienate Hanks’ intentions for helming such a project, I feel the lack of examples given to such an eye-opening assessment begs for more behind the scenes insight than what we’re ultimately given in this passion project, especially once the audience is able to piece together how responsible the industry might or might not be for Candy’s deteriorating health. It’s the lone example of why I wish that this film was produced by a more fearless director than someone other than Hanks, as his connection to the subject and the ensuing industry, might cloud his judgment on how to impact such assessments, and while this problem won’t deter passionate fans of Candy, who get to see the actor brought to life once more for nearly two hours, I can’t help but feel that the glaring omissions of this and many other compelling talking points won’t build a bridge to inexperienced audiences of the actor, in order to entice them into educating themselves on what made Candy so special. Besides this, the film does start to feel slightly too hagiographic during its most defining moments, particularly those relying more on the instrumental wave of resonance casually distributed from Tyler Strickland’s obviously single-note score, which musically summarizes the sentiments of the guests, without the deliberate need to hear their assessments on Candy out. I’m certainly not someone against a puff piece, especially for someone as meaningful to me as Candy, but John wasn’t without his well publicized demons, a fact that the movie only occasionally taps into, and while Hanks has noble intentions in attempting to maintain as much adoration about the iconic figure as possible, it does admittedly cross into self-indulgent territory in ways that many narrative-driven documentaries accomplish, leaving “I Like Me” feeling a bit too standardly scrubbed to feel sacred.

OVERALL
“John Candy: I Like Me” is a genuinely moving and affectionate tribute to larger than life actor, John Candy, whose limitless talent of comedic timing and dramatic depth on-screen was only surpassed by his gently generous and loving stature off of it, outlining a noticeable void by his untimely passing that hasn’t been filled in the thirty years that has followed. While Hanks does effectively muster a career introspection featuring a variety of guests throughout Candy’s most life-altering moments, his film feels a bit too sanitarily scrubbed to completely authenticate the complete picture of Candy’s live-fast lifestyle, and as a result still leaves plenty of lingering questions about the sensitive areas of John’s internalized conflicts

My Grade: 7.9 or B-