‘I Like Me’ Reminds Us Why John Candy Still Matters

I’d asked to review the John Candy documentary John Candy: I Like Me before it came out, and it was green-lit by our gracious head honcho. When it came time to actually do it, though, I kept putting it off. I’d find something else to chip away at, letting this one hover in my peripheral. I knew it was going to hurt. I knew it would be sad. And I was right.

I Like Me isn’t just about John Candy dying too soon; it’s about what it means to lose a kind soul in a world that’s grown meaner since he left it. What made Candy special wasn’t that he made us laugh — it’s that he made us feel seen while doing it.

John Candy: I Like Me ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Colin Hanks
Starring: John Candy, Chris Candy, Bill Murray
Running time: 113 mins

When we talk about beloved, fallen stars, the routes are predictable: rebel without a cause (James Dean), party-hard bad boy (John Belushi), or angel on borrowed time (Candy). But Colin Hanks’s film refuses the Hallmark treatment. He and big movie star, soccer team owner and fellow Canadian producer Ryan Reynolds tell Candy’s story from the viewpoint of “this guy still matters — even thirty years after his death.” The documentary fills its frames with people who knew him best: Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Catherine O’Hara. They don’t just praise him; they ache for him. The refrain lands: Candy was a good husband, a good father, a good friend — and somehow that feels revolutionary in an era of continual self-promotion and all-too-public meltdowns.

Hanks’s direction is quietly confident. He doesn’t canonize Candy; he unwraps the myth, which is signature for Hanks, who’s also directed projects about the fall of Tower Records and the band The Eagles of Death Metal, who had the unfortunate experience of having a mass shooting break out at one of their shows in France. But for Candy, Hanks is dialed in for his  clear affection for the subject and keeping his nice guy myth fully alive; every home-movie clip, every word from his wife or kids, lets fresh air into a room we forgot existed. The editing gives space for pauses and silences — for that tremor in O’Hara’s voice when she remembers a joke that no longer has a teller. My girlfriend, who works in comedy, bawled halfway through.

I’d been reluctant to press play because everyone has their own version of Candy. My generation grew up with him — Uncle Buck, Home Alone, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. His characters were chaotic but kind, funny but flawed. They reflected back to ourselves. Watching him again isn’t nostalgia but a reminder of how much decency used to matter. In a culture drowning in irony, revisiting Candy feels like finding a love letter written in sincerity. He picked roles that reflected a value set that grounded him: he didn’t act at people or talk down to children but instead saw everyone as a collaborator in the moment. Candy didn’t always play the same role (I mean, he was a Mog, half man-half dog, his own best friend, in Spaceballs) but he found ways in his choices to show that he was just like you and me: a guy who could embrace watching his brother’s kids or putting on a dress and being a silent weirdo next to Chevy Chase.

It’s easy to imagine where his career might have gone. Like Robin Williams, Candy had depth — the kind that could have carried him into the darker, more art-house era of the mid-’90s. Instead, his story stopped before cinema opened to reinvention. The film makes that loss sting all over again.

I Like Me works because it remembers that Candy’s real power wasn’t in punchlines but in empathy. He made the everyman a mirror. When he looked sad, we saw our own disappointments. When he cracked a grin, it was like the world briefly remembered how to be kind. He was a big guy, we saw our fears and idiosyncrasies amplified, not just in cinema and in satire/comedy but in his larger-than-life frame.

One of the things multiple people allude to is that Candy never laid off the booze, the smokes, and the buffets — that he played the jolly fat guy both in life and on-screen. The line blurred, and when a doctor said to drop the weight, he didn’t, even knowing it was likely a death sentence. When you’re a beloved movie star who can have anything you want, what does a cardiologist know? Candy’s death isn’t treated as a tragedy of error but rather framed as a man who saw the end coming and kept walking toward it. That arc is sad — not only for us, the fans, but for his kids, who’ve had a lot of time to reflect on his choices, despite his being a great man. The duality of life works like that because we’re all so flawed, even the best of our species.

John Candy ultimately was a people pleaser. He suffered from anxiety, he also did a lot of favors for friends, appearing in movies to make sure projects got made. All of these things contributed to an early goodbye – death by a thousand paper cuts as the old cliche goes.

When the credits roll, you don’t mourn John Candy. You miss him. You wanted to see him move into a different story arc: far beyond lovable fat guy, into places reserved for A listers and “actors.” He was that good. And in that space — between laughter and longing — Hanks delivers a gift to fans who still believe good people can matter as much as movie stars.