Uncle Buck (1989)

[5]

Writer/director John Hughes serves up this comedy star vehicle for John Candy, who plays an unreliable uncle called upon to babysit his nieces and nephew while their parents are away on emergency travel. As you can imagine, the meat of this movie is in Uncle Buck’s interactions with the children. Hughes is a master at letting characters breathe within the confines of tight story structure, but Uncle Buck is not the best example of his ability.

The film certainly has its moments, all of them involving Candy. Two of my favorites are an early scene in which young Macaulay Culkin (future star of Home Alone) holds his own in a bit of fast-paced dialogue with Candy. A second highlight involves Candy violently ‘fixing’ the washing machine, while a next door neighbor (the always reliable Laurie Metcalf) mistakes the noise for a sexual assault. Isolated moments like these are where Uncle Buck is best.

Where Uncle Buck falters is in its threads that hold the story together. One centers on Buck finally demonstrating some responsibility so that he can win back his girlfriend (tragically underrated Amy Madigan), and the other centers on Buck’s ability to make his oldest niece (Jean Louisa Kelly) less of a nasty, rebellious teenager. There’s no comedy in the first thread, which puts Madigan in the thankless, unfortunate role of ‘harpy’ for most of the film. The second thread tries to make up for it, with Buck ever vigilant and at times over-the-top in his attempts to scare away his niece’s libidinous boyfriend (Jay Underwood, The Boy Who Could Fly). The full weight of the film’s structure falls on the progression of these two storylines, which swallow up the last and least-funny third of the movie, and which aren’t fair to Madigan’s or Kelly’s characters. With Gaby Hoffman.