Why you should watch the John Candy documentary ‘I like me’ that’s breaking hearts and streaming now

This documentary is about an actor who nobody has anything bad to say about. Can you imagine that? In this day and age? It was only roughly 30 years ago that the Canadian actor passed away, but it seems like another period of time, another era. It was really. Before internet had taken off, before social media, it was a simpler and even happier time and Colin Hank’s portrait of John Candy reminds us of those times.

The documentary starts off with how John Candy’s father’s death on his fifth birthday marked him and impacted his childhood. “There was a connection with his birth and his dad’s death,” Rose Candy, his wife, said. “He had a vulnerability about him, he was a sweet man.”

Director Colin Hanks takes us through his childhood and how cinema and TV influenced him when he was young. The documentary is a tribute to a good guy that nobody has anything bad to say about, not even his kids. “My father was a big kid, so he knew how to be a kid with me,” said his son Chris Candy. “He understood the plight of the working person.”

His daughter Jennifer Candy tells viewers about what it was like being brought up by a famous actor who wasn’t around much. “He took care of everyone,” she said. His generosity and overall goodness was something that many of his friends and acting buddies talked about too.

Making it in Hollywood

After showing us his upbringing in Toronto and how he started in improv and acting, Hanks shows us how he impacted Hollywood and his fellow actors. “He was so presentable, so gentlemanly and so Canadian,” Dan Ackroyd said about meeting him.

“There’s nothing like being really bad to know you want to be better,” Billy Murray said about their beginnings and how they learned their trade.

“He was funny and he was just a good guy,” is how actor Eugene Levy described Candy when he was getting started as a comedian in Second City.

“He’s everything you want him to be, he’s John Candy times ten. He filled a room with his aura,” Conan O’Brien said about meeting the Canadian actor while studying at Harvard University.

Tom Hanks talked about his generosity and what he learned with him while filming ‘Splash,’ “I realized that John is inviting me to play with him. We invented a bunch of new stuff right there,” Hanks said.

Viewers also get a wonderful insight into the movies that John Candy did with director John Hughes, such as ‘Uncle Buck,’ ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles,’ ‘The Great Outdoors’ and others.

“It was easy to draw parallels between John Candy and ‘Uncle Buck’,” Macaulay Culkin said about working with him. “He showed us a lot of respect.”

The 1990s and Candy’s health problemls

The documentary inevitably touches on the anxiety he experienced later in his life as a “people pleaser” and someone who was comfortable on stage, but loved being at home in Canada surrounded by his friends and family.

Candy was concerned about his health, but refused to give up alcohol or change his diet. “He is living on borrowed time and he’s going to go away in a blink of an eye just like his father did,” Tom Hanks said about his insecurities and difficulties dealing with his father’s death.

“The industry wanted him big…I worried,” his wife said about his weight problems, Hollywood pressure and his drinking.

The star of “Home Alone,” “Spaceballs” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” died in Mexico at the age of 43 on March 4, 1994 of a heart attack. “He would be remembered for his good nature,” Mel Brooks said about him. “He was a total actor because he was a total person.”

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