Uncle Buck

I miss John Candy. I grew up watching the much-beloved comedian on SCTV and then his supporting turns in classic comedies like The Blues Brothers (1980) and Stripes (1981), but it was the movies he did with John Hughes that best displayed his comedic talents. They worked together on seven different occasions, from a walk-on role in Home Alone (1990) to co-starring with Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), but it was Candy’s starring role as the titular protagonist in Uncle Buck (1989) that brought out the best in him. Over the years, Candy and Hughes had become close friends and this movie could be seen as a cinematic love letter from the filmmaker to the comedian, tailoring a role specifically for him that best utilized his comedic skills.

When Cindy Russell’s (Elaine Bromka) father has a heart attack, she and her husband Bob (Garrett M. Brown) rush to be by his side, but who will watch their three children? Bob suggests his brother Buck (Candy). Cindy is apprehensive because he is single, does not hold down a steady job, gambles, and has zero experience with children, but after exhausting all other possibilities they go with him.

This premise sets up a clash of cultures between the Chicago-based Buck and three kids in suburbia. He certainly has his hands full with them. Miles (Macaulay Culkin) is one of those precocious, wise-beyond-his-years little kids as is his sister Maisy (GabyHoffmann), a cute-as-a-button little girl. Then there is Tia (Jean Louisa Kelly), the holy teen terror, bitter about her parents moving from Indianapolis, where she was happy, to the suburbs of Chicago. She takes out this resentment on everyone in the form of withering sarcasm and outright nastiness. This sets up a battle of wills between the irrepressible Buck and the perpetually bitchy Tia.

While it is true that Buck is a little rough around the edges, he is adept at learning on the job and is fiercely protective of the kids, scaring off a sleazy bowler that hits on Tia at a bowling alley and punching out a kids party clown that turns up drunk at Miles’ birthday bash.

Uncle Buck is a fantastic showcase for John Candy’s considerable talents as he hits the big comedic set pieces out of the park while also doing all sorts of little bits of business, like a lazy Buck vacuuming Corn Flakes off his chest or driving the kids to school in his beat-up old boat of a car that backfires as if on cue, thoroughly embarrassing Tia in front of her classmates. Candy is also adept at visual comedy, like the moment where Buck makes a pancake so big he has to flip it with a snow shovel! For all of the weapons in his comedic arsenal, Hughes also gave Candy moments to tone down the shtick, like in the scene where Buck stands up to the assistant principal that disparages Maizy with a passionately delivered tirade:

“I don’t think I want to know a six-year-old who isn’t a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don’t want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don’t have a college degree. I don’t even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they’re all good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they’re no good.”

This scene showcases Candy’s ability to do more than just tell jokes but also show how serious Buck is about taking care of these kids and how attached to them he has become. Candy also excels at the quieter, character moments, like when Buck confronts Tia after she orchestrates the break-up between him and his long-time, frustrated girlfriend (Amy Madigan). You expect him to really let the teenager have it but he doesn’t and you can see him keeping the explosive anger in check, simmering in Candy’s eyes.

Hughes isn’t afraid to inject serious moments here and there, mostly in the form of Tia’s bitter resentment towards the world, more specifically her mother. Jean Louisa Kelly does an excellent job of portraying a teenage girl filled with angst. Initially, Tia seems like a typical teen with an enormous chip on her shoulder but when she challenges Buck’s authority, it forces him to take a good look at the state of his own personal life.

In his feature film debut, Macaulay Culkin makes quite an impact, most notably in an amusing scene where Miles grills Buck with a series of personal questions, which he answers right back at him with crackerjack comic timing. He and fellow adorable ragamuffin, Gaby Hoffman primarily look and act cute, getting occasional well-timed zinger and handle them like old pros.

Much of the humor in Uncle Buck is derived from how Buck navigates the tricky waters of domesticity with his bachelor blue-collar ways clashing with life in the suburbs. While this makes him a cultural fish out of water, he also gives the kids a taste of his life when he takes them bowling and they meet some of the ne’er-do-wells that populate his world.

Uncle Buck could have easily resorted to being a Mr. Mom (1983) clone, which Hughes also wrote, but he deftly avoids this by showing a different clash of cultures. Whereas Mr. Mom featured an executive trying his hand at childrearing, Uncle Buck features an everyman afraid to commit to his girlfriend until he learns what it means to commit yourself to others that depend on him for basic things like food and security.

After Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), Hughes stopped making teen movies and moved into family fare with Home Alone (1990) and Curly Sue (1991), which proved to be a very smart, financial move on his part. Clearly, he realized that his brand of teen movies were played out and he had said everything he wanted to about the genre and wanted to try something new. What better collaborator to help make this transition then Candy, whom he had worked with more often than anyone else. They were close friends off-camera, their families hung out together. Hughes was understandably shaken when Candy died suddenly of a heart attack in 1994. It is no coincidence that he made fewer movies afterwards and eventually quietly retired from the business altogether.

Uncle Buck is Candy at his most charming and endearing but without being sappy as he keeps his performance grounded so that everything he says and does feels genuine. Hughes excelled at making entertaining crowd pleasers and this movie is a prime example. It is also a sobering reminder of how much Candy and his brand of comedy are sorely missed. The world is a poorer place without him and Hughes in it.

Nate and Hayes

Before Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), pirate movies were considered to be box office poison and with good reason. High profile efforts like Yellowbeard (1983), Roman Polanski’s Pirates (1986) and the most notorious of them all Cutthroat Island (1995) were financial flops. In 1983, Nate and Hayes attempted to fuse the sensibilities of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with the pirate genre to predictable critical scorn and lackluster box office returns. The movie is significant for two reasons: the screenplay was co-written by John Hughes and starred Tommy Lee Jones. Yes, the man responsible for classic 1980s teen movies like Sixteen Candles (1984) and The Breakfast Club (1985) wrote a pirate movie. I remember when Nate and Hayes came out and the trailers made it look like a fun, action/adventure romp, but for some reason I never got around to seeing it. Decades later, I decided to check it out and see if it was as derivative as its reputation would suggest.

We meet Captain Bully Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones) and his crew hacking their way through a jungle not unlike the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This will be the first of a few nods to that film. They cross a dodgy looking rope bridge (that oddly anticipates Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by a few months) and arrive in a village populated by spear-wielding natives. Hayes is a cocky and confident smuggler trading rifles for gold. Predictably, the deal goes bad and he barely escapes with his life in an exciting chase sequence only to be caught by Ben Pease (Max Phipps), a rival now working for the Spanish who charge him with treason. He is thrown into prison where he recounts the story of how he got there.

Hayes is taking a young missionary couple – Nathaniel (Michael O’Keefe) and Sophie (Jenny Seagrove) – to an island mission somewhere in the Pacific Ocean where they plan to get married and convert the local natives to Christianity. Hayes is smitten with Sophie who invests the money she inherited from her dead father in his “trading company” unbeknownst to Nate. Unfortunately, on their wedding day the mission is attacked by a ruthless gang of slave traders led by Pease. They burn the village to the ground, kidnap Sophie and leave Nate for dead. Hayes rescues him and together they devise a plan to rescue Sophie.

Tommy Lee Jones doesn’t have matinee idol good looks and this works in his favor as Bully Hayes. The actor’s rugged features are a good match for his character. The actor tempers his trademark stoicism with a mischievous roguish glint in his eye. Hayes may have disreputable standing, but meeting Sophie awakens good tendencies within him. Jones is a physical actor and he uses that quality effectively in Nate and Hayes to play a man of action. The actor is also smart enough to realize that he’s starring in a pulpy genre movie and adjusts his approach accordingly by playing Hayes as an unrepentant adventurer as he says at one point, “I never flew the skull and crossbones, but I have sought pleasure and profit all my life at sea without regard for any man’s law.”

Michael O’Keefe plays Nate, the uptight missionary who learns to loosen up once he hangs out with Hayes and his crew. It’s a thankless role that the actor commits to fully, but doesn’t succumb to simple caricature. Nate isn’t an idiot; he’s just naïve and quickly learns a thing or two about the world under Hayes’ guidance. Jones and O’Keefe play well off each other, their characters start off loathing each other and then bond over confronting a common foe and achieving the same goal. At times, it looks like the two actors are having a blast playing heroes in a pulpy action/adventure movie in the way they exchange good-natured looks while pursuing the bad guys.

The casting of Hayes’ crew is spot-on. They really do look like a group of grungy buccaneers out for a good time and to make some money, not above killing anybody that gets in their way. Ferdinand Fairfax’s direction and Tony Imi’s cinematography is a little on the flat side, giving Nate and Hayes a made-for-television quality with the occasional cinematic flourishes, which is a shame because the pirate movie is a genre crying out for flashy style as the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise demonstrate so amply.

David Odell wrote a screenplay entitled Savage Islands, which he based on an actual Pacific pirate in the 19th century. Jeffrey Katzenberg greenlighted the film over at Paramount Pictures with Tommy Lee Jones cast as the pirate. According to Odell, as they were in pre-production building ships, director Ferdinand Fairfax wasn’t happy with the ending of the script. Odell rewrote it several times but Fairfax “couldn’t decide what he wanted.” John Hughes owed the studio a commitment and they sent him a copy of the script. He did a rewrite in three weeks, transforming a 105-page script into a 250-page one, and then left the project. A week before principal photography began the filmmakers were not satisfied with Hughes’ revisions and, according to Odell, tossed them out. Odell handed in another draft and went off to work on Supergirl (1984). The filmmakers were still unhappy with the third act and Fairfax rewrote it himself.

Nate and Hayes received mostly negative reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it one out of four stars and wrote, “The movie is a loud, confusing, pointless mess that never seems to make up its mind whether to be a farce of an adventure.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Ferdinand Fairfax, the director, allows the actors to strain for comic effects that aren’t there.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas felt that the movie “could easily have been terrific … But Nate and Hayes drowns in excessive violence and Trevor Jones’ loud, bombastic score.”

At the end of the day, Nate and Hayes starts off as an extended riff on Raiders of the Lost Ark and then mutates into a pirate movie that plugs in all the right elements: fist fights, gun battles, chases, swordfights, angry natives, a lovely damsel in distress, dastardly villains, and loveable rogues – what more could you want? Nate and Hayes is saved from being simply another genre exercise by Jones’ appealing performance. The obvious comparisons to Indiana Jones probably hurt the movie’s commercial prospects, but over time it has aged surprisingly well, coming across as a lean, swashbuckler as opposed to the unnecessarily overstuffed, plot-heavy Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

SOURCES

Helford, Ross. “A Conversation with David Odell.”