John Candy: I Like Me Documents a Great Guy, and a Poor Documentary Subject

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There’s an inherent issue with attempting to craft a feature film documentary around a deceased figure of nigh-universal likeability: If the person is truly beloved by all, then it stands to reason that almost everyone will have the same things to say about the guy. This proves to be the case with Colin Hanks’ loving, elegiac, but ultimately rudderless new film John Candy: I Like Me, a Prime Video project marketed as a feature documentary, but instead existing as more a freeform collection of wistful reminiscences from a deep roster of Hollywood friends still wounded by the beloved actor’s sudden 1994 passing more than 30 years later. It’s a hagiography more than anything, one that does benefit from access to an intriguing library of behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and outtakes, but rarely does I Like Me know how to connect this material to any kind of deeper insight into John Candy’s psyche, with a few notable exceptions that ultimately aren’t enough. It’s not that Hanks as filmmaker necessarily doesn’t want to get into this material; it’s that he’s unable to access much of it, the mysteries of Candy’s inner monologue and anxieties remaining largely cordoned off by the actor himself. Candy simply guarded himself too closely for those in his life to fully crack, even as they weave a two-hour documentary with that goal in mind.

For that reason, John Candy: I Like Me hardly feels like a modern project at all–there’s basically nothing present here that would be measurably different from if it had been filmed 10 years ago, or even 20. The stories and the cast would be largely the same, the one difference being that more of Candy’s contemporaries have had time to ponder their own mortalities in the decades that followed, and his children have grown to roughly the same age their father was when he passed away from a heart attack at 43. But even now, one gets the sense that Candy’s family still sees him as a mystery in some respects–as son Christopher Candy observes early on, “It feels a bit like being a detective of your own father’s life.”

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The one indisputably key, central event that John Candy: I Like Me justifiably references with regularity is the passing of John Candy’s own father Sidney, which likewise happened due to a heart attack in 1955, when Sidney was only 35 years old. This event happened on John Candy’s fifth birthday of all days, and the film depicts it as the monolithic event of his childhood that cast a sort of psychic pall over his entire life. From an early age, Candy seemed morbidly convinced that he would be following his father to an early death, depressive feelings that he (illogically, yes) sought to salve with the very kind of drinking and drug use that would undoubtedly make the outcome that much more likely. We see him at various points in his life as he attempts to confront these lifestyle choices, and then pull away from the realities of that confrontation, and it’s Candy’s reticence to talk about any of it (especially his father), even with his closest friends and family, that ultimately stymie Hanks’ film to some degree. We end up having to infer and assume much of what Candy felt and experienced, rather than having primary sources capture it or interrogate it. It’s a largely incomplete picture of Candy’s most important motivator in this narrative.

That leaves much of John Candy: I Like Me instead simply falling back on the easiest territory to tread: Fun and loving memories of a beloved performer, shared by friends from every phase of the actor’s career. We see him captured in many highlight moments, from joining the incredibly talent-rich cast of SCTV, to the genesis of his film acting career in Steven Spielberg’s 1941, to the sweetly nurturing effect he had on a young Conan O’Brien, who details his star-struck meeting with Candy as the geeky comedy writer for the Harvard Lampoon in the 1980s. The film’s greatest asset are the resources that emerge from these portions, the copious amounts of behind-the-scenes footage, where we get to watch Candy joking around casually with co-stars, or throwing absurd improv lines in the face of someone like Catherine O’Hara in outtakes from Home Alone as she struggles to hold things together. Oddly, though, the film doesn’t seem particularly interested in getting into Candy’s full range as an actor–despite a few of the talking heads obliquely mentioning his dramatic abilities, I Like Me never details later career dramatic roles in the likes of Only the Lonely or JFK, showing a few brief moments but preferring to stick to his best-known comedy material. As was the case in life, it’s like the film doesn’t want to deviate too much from the defined, jolly, Falstaff-ian character outline that Candy occupies in popular culture.

Moreover, some of the anecdotes and talking heads employed by Hanks have a tendency to directly contrast each other, which leads to an impression that some interviewees are perhaps being more honest in their recollections than others. Bill Murray, for instance, recalls some of the earliest improv work that he and Candy embarked upon at Chicago’s Second City, saying that Candy and himself were the performers that no one else really wanted to work with at the time because they were both green, hesitant and uncertain of their abilities. Minutes later, however, some of the same Second City cast members are raving about what a natural improviser Candy was in those days, seeming to scan past the reality that Murray described with rose-colored glasses. One gets the sense that Hanks is often being told what people know he wants to hear, being fed material by actors/writers who intuitively understand that this project will be primarily a feel-good clip show.

That said, the viewer can glean some of Candy’s personal struggles at times with their own eyes, particularly in the large amount of footage of Candy stuck in mind-numbing or outright insulting interviews, where talk show hosts and makeup-clad faces chide him about his weight, or say clearly painful things like “Is it true that everyone loves a fat man?”, or “You’ve been in more turkeys than a stuffing mix.” Even before these clips progress to the point where practically any viewer would want to spring to Candy’s defense, they hint at the near-crippling social anxiety of a man who is deeply, clearly uncomfortable sitting down across from a stranger saying banal things along the lines of “When did you first become funny?”

It feels like only within the fraternity of other performers, or his own family in their secluded home, could Candy even begin to let his guard down, to drop the bluster and “Johnny Toronto” image of confidence and gregariousness that he had fashioned as a shield. Sometimes the film seems to get this point; other times it seems to be missing it entirely. Del Griffith’s titular “I like me” speech from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, for instance, seems to be posited as Candy sharing some of his truth; in reality it seems more to me like Del is who the star wished he actually was, a man much more comfortable with any of his perceived failings than Candy was.

Bill Murray–who as previously mentioned, feels like he’s one of the most honest here–puts it best when he observes in the opening moments that “I wish I had some more bad things to say about him,” in reference to Hanks’ chore in assembling this film. It’s a sentiment that pretty much everyone shares, which means the examination of John Candy can really only go so far, always stopping short of the most intense material we know must be there. You’ll learn a few factoids of interest–did you know that Candy had a kneecap removed in a high school football injury?–but leave with little more appreciation for the subject than you had going in. It’s just difficult to develop more esteem for the guy that everyone already loves. And is it really going to be any more enjoyable or touching than simply watching Uncle Buck again?

Director: Colin Hanks
Release date: Oct. 10, 2025 (Prime Video)