Uncle Buck

Uncle Buck (1989)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: John Hughes

Starring: John Candy, Jean Louisa Kelly, Macaulay Culkin, Gaby Hoffmann, Amy Madigan

From: Universal

Yes, this will be my last review of 2014. I shall return Thursday afternoon the 1st of next year. I have things to do tonight and tomorrow. So, onto what I wrote about this film on Letterboxd, which includes some details of my vacation:

Finally, after time spent away in another state on a vacation spent with family for the holidays then more time spent resting from said trip and catching up on other websites, I can finally focus on this site, and talk about one of the films I at least got to see parts of while halfway across the country from where I live. It was literally something the whole family watched; we had seen it more than once before in our lives, although me I hadn't watched this in years.

Of course, like many people around my age-I'll be mid 30's pretty soon-I had already seen plenty of John Candy films and thought he was awesome and when he suddenly passed away 20 years ago it was horrible and sad news. I have fond memories of most of those films, including this one. I also have seen my share of John Hughes movies and I was also saddened when I heard about his death. I'll try my best to not let nostalgia cloud my judgment here. While the entire film was watched with a pair of two year old toddlers running around making noise, that was OK as it turns out I remembered the film better than I thought I would.

This comedy with dramatic moments doesn't have too many surprises but it's OK. The plot revolves around an upper middle class family (The Russell family; no relation) who recently moved from Indianapolis to the Chicago suburbs; there's the parents and two elementary school kids (who are unfortunately of the precocious type, but that's just a pet peeve); there's also a 15 year old daughter, Tia, who is a typical moody teenage girl who is still unhappy about the move... and is just unpleasant most of the time. Her typical facial expressions of disgust/incredulity are great. Well, the parents have to be away for a family emergency and the only guy who can babysit them is the title character, a slovenly lower class guy who has issues with his main girl, can't hold a job, makes money from gambling and drives a crappy old car. He still has a good heart and tries his best with his niece and nephews but Tia can't stand him and that provides much of the conflict.

You can probably guess how things are resolved; still, as an adult I was still entertained by the story and how all the characters acted towards each other and how there are memorable bit parts from Laurie Metcalf as a kooky neighbor and Tia's boyfriend being a wannabe art student type who calls himself “Bug” (who Buck can see through and realizes isn't a good dude) to sleazy people at the bowling alley and an alcoholic clown known as Pooter who I just discovered on this viewing was played by the great character actor known as Mike Starr.

Along with some nice heartfelt moments, a good number of serious moments & memorable speeches (I am looking at Buck tearing apart the principal of the school his 6 year old niece goes to because the educator expects 6 year olds to act like adults) there are many funny bits and some of the adult humor finally made sense now. As it's John Candy he played the bumbling yet well-meaning nice guy role to a T and there are definite character arcs with some nice lessons that anyone and everyone should at least keep in mind.

So, it was nice to see this with the family-as just us getting all together is a rare feat, let alone all of us watching something in the same room-and from now until likely next December I'll be here and doing reviews about as often as usual.