JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME’ Rated PG-13

More than thirty years after his passing, beloved comedian and actor John Candy finally gets his due in the respectful documentary “John Candy: I Like Me” that covers his life in his own words and those of family, friends, and colleagues.
 

 
Fans of the Canadian thespian, who got his start in Toronto’s “The Second City” and the “SCTV” television series, will get a better idea of his on-screen persona reflecting much of his own everyman warmth and self-effacing charm in this Amazon Prime Video biopic. 
   
How did this film arrive at the subtitle “I Like Me,” you ask? Steve Martin, his co-star in “Trains, Planes & Automobiles,” in his role of Dale Neal unloaded a truckload of insults as he grew weary of Candy’s Del Griffith, a shower-curtain-ring salesman’s endless blather.
   
The scene is played here, where Dale says to Del, “I mean, didn’t you notice on the plane when you started talking, eventually I started reading the vomit bag? Didn’t that give you some sort of clue, like, hey, maybe this guy’s not enjoying it?”
   
The look on Del’s face exposed real hurt, as he then retorted, “I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me, ‘cause I’m the real deal. I’m the real article. What you see is what you get.”
   
What Candy’s character says to Steve Martin’s really sums up what a parade of show business colleagues, family and friends reveal about the comedian. What everyone saw with Candy was the sweet nature of an agreeable, warmhearted person devoid of artifice and guile.
   
In the opening scene, Bill Murray, another co-star in “Stripes,” says, “I wish I had some bad things to say about him,” and then relays to director Colin Hanks his wish that this project would turn to “some people who’ve got some dirt on him.”
   
Either the director and the production team didn’t bother to dig deeper, or they just couldn’t locate malcontents or aggrieved parties to satisfy Murray’s whim. Judging by the good things said of Candy by so many, the latter was the obvious result.
   
Befitting a documentary focused on the life of one man, the films include plenty of home videos, pictures straight out of family albums, and a plethora of film clips that lead to fond memories.    
   
An apparent page out of a yearbook has Candy labeled as “The Pink Panther,” and it would be nice to know the meaning of this reference. Did it have anything to do with the Peter Sellers film, and was that British actor an influence on his comedy?
   
Anecdotes throughout the film divulge some interesting tidbits. Apparently according to a friend, during the Vietnam War, Candy wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army and visited Buffalo to see if he was eligible, only to be rejected due a knee injury suffered playing football in school.
   
The late Roger Ebert, at the time of a 1981 release of a film starring Bill Murray joined by Candy, mentioned that at least one summer film would be “irreverent, gross-out, anarchistic, slapstick comedy, and this summer it is ‘Stripes.’” 
  
Clips from that zany military comedy show Candy’s self-effacing humor as he tells other recruits that he has “a slight weight problem,” and that a doctor told him that he “swallows a lot of aggression with a lot of pizzas.”
   
As a student at Harvard while president of “National Lampoon,” Conan O’Brien, desiring to have comedy heroes visit the university, convinced Candy to participate in a big montage of his film clips, where he “filled the room with his aura. He was expansive and joyful.”
   
That Candy was willing to nurture talent was revealed by O’Brien admitting to the comedian that he was interested in trying comedy, and Candy replied, “You don’t try it. You either do it or you don’t do it. You don’t try it, kid.” The idea of going all in or not at all is good advice in many fields.
   
Tragedy in his own family affected Candy deeply, as it is revealed that his father died of a heart attack on the day of his fifth birthday, leaving him in a state of confusion and possibly a sense of dread. Candy died of a heart attack at the age of 43 while filming in Mexico.
   
From Steve Martin, it was interesting to learn that director and writer John Hughes (“Home Alone”) wrote characters specifically for Candy, referencing “Uncle Buck.”
   
This review of “John Candy: I Like Me” only scratches the surface of the remarkable life of a man and legend, as there is much divulged by fellow actors like Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Tom Hanks, Dan Aykroyd, and Eugene Levy, among others. 
   
We cannot leave out the memories shared by his widow Rose Candy, nor those of his children, Christopher and Jennifer, who share more intimate details of growing up with a loving father who was often absent due to his work. Fans of John Candy will be edified.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.