Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: A likeable documentary about a likeable subject, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward look at a comedian whose work is still entertaining audiences three decades after his passing.

CAST: John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Macaulay Culkin. Directed by Colin Hanks.

REVIEW: Martin Short told “John Candy: I Like Me” documentary producer Ryan Reynolds and director Colin Hanks (whose famous father co-starred with Candy in “Splash”), they would not be able to find anyone with anything bad to say about John Candy. Short was right. Everyone in the doc speaks glowingly of Candy, his generosity of spirit and luminous talent, but this isn’t a straight up hagiography.

Those nearest and dearest to the late comic actor, like his children Jennifer and Chris, widow Rose, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Macaulay Culkin, Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O’Hara, paint a colorful portrait of a larger-than-life character who battled weight issues and an anxiety disorder.

Thirty years after his passing on a film shoot in Durango, Mexico, Candy’s work remains as funny and endearing as it was when first released. Hanks’s film offers up copious evidence in the form of clips from “SCTV,” “Uncle Buck,” “Splash,” “Spaceballs,” “Home Alone,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (it’s a line in the latter that gives this movie its name: “I like me,” Candy says as Del Griffith. “My wife likes me.”) and many others, and while it’s lovey to revisit those moments, it’s the picture of Candy off screen that compels.

New interviews with school friends, family and colleagues like Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short and Steve Martin tell the tale. From growing up in a working-class Toronto family, to his father’s passing of heart disease at age 35 when John was four years old, to putting his dreams of football stardom aside after a knee injury to discovering acting in college, we learn how each of these events shaped the trajectory of his life and career from the people who were there with him.

Everyone describes him as a charismatic character, the first one to pick up the tab in the early days, even though they were all making the same money. He was a people pleaser, but as Conan O’Brien points out, “The hazard of this business is that it’s very unhealthy for people pleasers.”

More up-close-and-personal are the remembrances of his Chris, Jennifer and Rose. They provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes glimpse of a man who, as his daughter says, “took care of people” but didn’t necessarily take care of himself. He liked a drink, a cigarette and, as anxiety entered his life, became convinced he would die early, just as his father had.

Ultimately, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward, heartfelt documentary with a bittersweet ending. Candy passed at age 43, but the wealth of material he left behind, the TV shows and movies, still entertains, three decades after his passing.