John Candy could look funny even when scowling. Such was his natural-born talent, under-utilized by Hollywood, alas, even up his heart-attack at only 43 while filming the unwatchable Wagons East (1994). He had the classically-round, clown-face, prominent nose and lips, and of course he was always pudgy, going on morbidly obese. Chris Farley, who had a similar but even shorter trajectory, once summed it up: "Fat man fall on face ... funny." But Candy could also rely on his always protracted, truly inimitable, near-maniacal, mountain-peak-sized laughter--oh, that laugh, like nobody else's, ever--and, paradoxically, could call on a somewhat darker side of his comic persona to pull in his audience completely. The name didn't hurt, either.John Hughes died of a heart-attack a couple of weeks ago at 59, but after all of those wildly successful "teen-films" of the early- and mid-80s, he had been sort of out of commission as a prominent auteur about as long as Candy's posthumous career. His last writer/director effort, in fact, was Uncle Buck (1989), which, along with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) comprise his best work, in my opinion. With credit due to Steve Martin in the latter, these two films featured John Candy doing his very best work. Third on my list would be writer-only Hughes' Home Alone (1990--none of the sequels), buoyed up, yes, by John Candy's cameo spot as Polka King of the Midwest, a reprise of an earlier character on the breakthrough and still-watchable SCTV series.
The Hughes/Candy collaborations outshone anything else they ever did. Candy consistently stole the spotlight in supporting or cameo roles, from Splash to Blues Brothers to the quirky Southern lawyer in JFK. But his starring efforts were maddeningly compromised by bad scripts and low production values, with the exception of Only the Lonely (1991), which was produced by none other than John Hughes, but written and directed by frequent collaborator Chris Columbus. Not a great film--none mentioned here would come near the top 100, frankly--but the interactions of the three lead actors speaking some pretty good lines make the film. Candy is in his sweet-shy-but-maybe-manic mode as a lonely Chicago cop of Irish extraction; out-of-retirement Maureen O'Hara is the bigoted, overbearing, first-generation-extractor mother; Allie Sheedy reprises her neurotic Breakfast Club role (Hughes again), but in an adult, Italian-ancestry, would-be-fiancee' guise. "She's a Guinea; please don't tell me she's Sicilian, too?"--asks/demands O'Hara. "Yes Ma, she is"--Candy proudly responds, signaling her son's first baby-steps toward independence.
Candy's sweet/crazy persona--that raucous laugh could erupt anytime--is perfect for the perpetual loser matched with Steve Martin's up-tight "winner" in Hughes's Planes. It marks a new departure for all three: Hughes would get off his teen-angst-movie hobblety-horse and make a truly adult film; Candy would finally be offered a lead worthy of his talents; and Steve Martin would move from the strictly-for-laughs roles--never straying too far from The Jerk--of past movies. But my goodness, did he not do them well?--1984's All of Me will always be my favorite. He went on, though, soon after Planes, to portray more fully-rounded comic characters in such films as Parenthood and L.A. Story, and to take them into much darker territory than before, like those in My Blue Heaven and Leap of Faith (1992)--the latter my second-favorite Steve Martin movie, still underrated, where he turns in the best acting job of his life. (more)
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