John Candy would seemingly be a horrible documentary subject because there’s no controversy about him. Everyone liked him, and as the title “John Candy: I Like Me” (Amazon Prime) suggests, he liked himself well enough. Interviewee Bill Murray jokingly tries to stir controversy by noting that Candy once ad-libbed an annoyingly long time in a scene.
Still, director Colin Hanks – “Roswell” actor and son of Tom, who broke through to the big screen with Candy in “Splash” (1984) – finds two key angles. These insights of course can’t save Candy, who died in 1994 at age 43, but can be valuable to viewers and society at large.
One, Hanks pulls lots of old interviews and shows how the easygoing Candy got uncomfortable when interviewers brought up his weight. In today’s more PC era, he likely wouldn’t be badgered about it so much.
Two, “I Like Me” notes that Candy suffered from anxiety but did not get counseling or medication. On this count, times have unquestionably changed for the better; if he lived into today’s more accepting era of men’s mental health, he perhaps would’ve gotten the help he needed.
Canadian bakin’
Although tears might be shed at the funeral footage, this is a mostly uplifting documentary, accompanied by that tinge of bittersweetness in that we only got two decades’ worth of Candy films. He packed a lot into that time, and it wasn’t always a good thing for him; as an inveterate people-pleaser, he took roles in many bad films. (But of course balanced it out by hitching himself to John Hughes. As Macaulay Culkin notes, Candy was in eight Hughes films, easily topping his and Molly Ringwald’s three.)
“I Like Me” takes us from Candy’s Second City days (the clip of “Yellowbelly: The Biggest Coward in the West” is hilarious) up through something I was less familiar with, his ownership of the Toronto Argonauts. He poured himself into that just as much as he did his acting and his family (as seen in many home-video clips). His widow and two children are among the interview subjects, along with all his major co-stars who are still living.
It’s unavoidably a love fest, but I get the sense that the interviewees naturally take it there. Hanks does tease out good analysis, though, by focusing on the famous “I like me” scene from “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” on the short list of greatest Thanksgiving movies.
The scene across from Steve Martin – as Neal Page, ripping into Candy’s Del Griffith — nicely illustrates both aspects of Candy’s greatness as an actor: He’s his likeable self, but also he’s doing great reactionary acting. So much so that Martin says he felt sympathy and checked to make sure he was just acting, and not hurt by the words.
By a preponderance of evidence in “I Like Me,” Candy truly was the huggable guy he played in most of his roles, and it’s enjoyable – if bittersweet — to recount his life and career. You won’t mind that no dirt is uncovered, and you’ll want to go directly into a Candy catalog rewatch when it ends.