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I Like Me Rests Easy on How Much We Like John Candy

It’s hard not to be predisposed towards a celebration of the life of John Candy, one of the most effortlessly lovable entertainers of the past fifty years taken far too soon back in 1994. I was barely alive at the same time that he was, but I miss him every time I see one of his movies or TV shows like few other actors who have passed. Because John Candy is one of those actors I always feel cognizant of how much was lost in terms of exciting performances and movies by his death. I even paid my own tribute to him years ago. So going into John Candy: I Like Me, the documentary directed by Colin Hanks (who first met Candy as a kid on the set of Splash), and that appropriately opened this year’s Toronto Film Festival, I was prepared to enjoy some highlights from his career, memories shared by his family and friends, and even be emotionally moved by the story of his tragedy. And the movie does all that fairly well without venturing outside the normal parameters of a showbiz doc. Much like the Jim Henson documentary last year, it is focused entirely on the endearing nature of its subject, while chronicling a story that  most of his fans are well aware of. It doesn’t mean the film isn’t effective or enjoyable though. It is nice to hear so many people talking so nicely about a friend who touched them deeply.
The film actually opens on Bill Murray arguing against the very point of the documentary, contending that Candy was someone who nobody has a bad word to say about, and so there’s seemingly no real drama to mine in his life story. Hanks however does prove otherwise, as the movie, which starts at Candy’s funeral and a nicely edited montage set to Dan Aykroyd’s beautiful eulogy before backtracking through his life, constructs a narrative that draws on a series of traumas and insecurities as a throughline, alongside the good nature and positive impact Candy left on everybody he met. Candy’s children, Jennifer and Chris (who looks so much like him), and his widow Rosemary are as interested in what he was going through as everyone else -and though they don’t drive the documentary like Christopher Reeve’s kids did in his, they are a substantial part of its emotional relevance. Mutually they felt ready to partake in such an exercise at this time and you can tell in the way they talk about their father and husband -with sadness, but curiosity as well.
One thing that even a lot of Candy’s friends didn’t know was that his father had died on his fifth birthday, and it was something that the family never fully addressed or reckoned with -and Candy himself resisted the opportunities to attempt healing from it, thus it haunted much of his life. Hanks threads several points back to this, from Candy's career anxieties, his health issues (heart conditions ran in his family), his efforts to do too much and stress as a result of this, even the death of John Belushi is linked. And while there is certainly an argument to connect all of these, Hanks does perhaps make it a bit too simple. His subjects certainly don't see it that way.
It is through them primarily that we get a great chronology of Candy's life and career as well as some good stories that speak to the side of the man that wasn't necessarily public -stories that only accentuate his virtues. I love the anecdote from Catherine O'Hara that upon getting his Hollywood film debut (in Spielberg's 1941) ahead of his Second City cast-mates, he apologized profusely to them. During his ownership of the Toronto Argonauts he made a point to attend every game and stayed late to shake hands with fans all over Canada. And to this, the movie does a nice job emphasizing his Canadian roots and character, his association with Toronto (he was jokingly named “Johnny Toronto” by his friends due to his ambitions), and his very affable earnestness. The film doesn’t dwell on any particular project of his career but it does well to highlight some enough to ferment that appreciation. SCTV is a big one, with characters like the Shmenge Brothers, and Dr. Tongue getting some spotlight, as well as Conan O’Brien sharing the impact a dark Candy sketch called “Yellowbelly” had on him. The movie moves through things like his last-minute cameo in National Lampoon’s Vacation, his movie breakout in Splash and then ultimately of course his relationship with John Hughes through Uncle Buck, Home Alone, and of course Planes, Trains, & Automobiles -widely considered his greatest performance and the source of the movie’s title. Through these come very noteworthy, even heartfelt testimonials from folks like Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, and O’Hara -though perhaps the most notable is Macauley Culkin, who emotionally recalls how Candy seemed to recognize the effects of Culkin’s abusive father on the set of Uncle Buck and made efforts to check in with the child actor when no one else would.
He was like a kid himself, his wife would say. And though the family side of his story here inevitably is dwarfed by discussion of his career, it is nicely contextualized in the scheme of his loving character -the pain especially in his later years of having to be away from them for lengths of time. How this impacted the kids is left a bit to the sidelines -Jennifer and Chris offer a lot of generalized broad strokes but the image of Candy at home is not wholly apparent. Obviously they are allowed their privacy and it has been over thirty years, there’s no suggestion they are intentionally sanctifying an image or anything. But it is curious that even they seem more interested in recalling their father’s public career than their own personal memories.
And yet they are open about the other issue besides old family trauma that effected Candy considerably and that was his health and weight. Candy never wanted his weight to be a source of humour and was deeply uncomfortable with instances where it was -most notably the mud-wrestling scene from Stripes. Yet he did genuinely care about losing weight and living more healthily, but it often came up against his fears that he wouldn’t be accepted in any other shape -he was frequently worried his career would come to a sudden end. Not helped was the media reinforcement -the most difficult parts of the doc being the interview clips (one of which with Barbara Walters) where he is asked directly about his weight and Candy is visibly uncomfortable as he tries to respond diplomatically. He felt awkward in interview contexts already, he didn’t need spotlights on his weight or the negative reception to some of his movies. It is a good angle from which to approach the harsh and image-centric world of Hollywood. O’Brien has a line about that industry being difficult for ‘people-pleasers’ like Candy because it takes and takes and keeps asking for more. These are insights that aren’t surprising but against a subject like Candy and his good nature, Hanks finds a way to make them really sting.
By virtue of the film’s title, parodic invocations of the speech it comes from in the end credits (including from producer Ryan Reynolds himself in one of his Deadpool movies), and the use of the song “Everytime You Go Away” covered by Cynthia Erivo to underscore it, Candy’s role in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles is subtextually linked to his real-life character. I think that is a bit unfair -as endearing as Del Griffith ultimately is, he is not entirely a flattering personality. As a title it also doesn’t quite fit with how the movie frames him in both his work and personal lives. But that bittersweet tenor underlying the character hits very hard in lieu of the story of his actor -I’d wager the true power of that movie didn’t become clear until after Candy’s death. In talking about that film and recounting a meeting with Candy, Roger Ebert had a poignant observation: “He was a sweet guy and nobody had a word to say against him, but he was down on himself. All he wanted to do was to make people laugh, but sometimes he tried too hard, and he hated himself for doing that in some of his movies.” If they don’t say it in those exact terms, a lot of the people in this documentary would agree that John Candy’s tragedy was not knowing how loved he was -there were many reasons for this, but it is true and it is horrible. But he left behind a good body of work and a wonderful legacy of personality that folks are still coming to and falling in love with today. I Like Me is a good celebration, if as a documentary it is not much more than that. But no one can argue John Candy doesn’t deserve the laurels it gives him.

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