John Candy: I ​​Like Me review – starry but syrupy tribute to comedy legend | Movies

HThere is a film with some heartfelt, but often very treacly and solemn, funerals for the late John Candy, almost as if he died a few days ago, with stirring, sad music running almost the entire time. There’s a great line-up of staff and stars, and it’s good to see Candy’s unique, likable and cheerful screen personality, but the tone borders on off-puttingly reverent.

Candy was the beloved Canadian actor and comedian who graduated from Toronto’s Second City comedy troupe and its small offshoot SCTV; he was a contemporary of Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara and Bill Murrayand went on to star in films such as Stripes, Uncle Buck and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. His death in 1994 at the age of 43 was the result of a heart attack brought on by his weight problems, as well as drinking and smoking (although the film rather sarcastically overlooks his cocaine use).

The subtitle of the film is taken from the wounded, dignified speech of Candy’s unlikable 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, because I’m the genuine article.” The documentary as a whole is perhaps a little too easy to conflate that lovable character with Candy himself, who was a bit more complex, pessimistic and fatalistic after the traumatizing death of his father from a heart attack at the age of 35 (when Candy himself was only five), and knowing that his successful career in comedy films depended on being big.

Candy got his break when he was cast by Steven Spielberg in 1941, and perhaps he could have been a Spielbergian figure in cinema; instead, the director who took him on was John Hughes, who cast him in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, and many more films. But it was Ron Howard who further exploited his sunny, good nature by opposing him Tom Hanks in Splash, and there was a very interesting bromance chemistry between them.

Candy had a natural face for the movies – open, naive, boyish and trusting – although I came away from this documentary suspecting that nothing he did for the big screen was as funny as the loathsome character he played on SCTV: Yellowbelly, the cowardly cowboy who actually shoots a small child in the back.