UNCLE BUCK (1989)

UNCLE BUCK (1989)

Tagline: He's crude. He's crass. He's family.

(Comedy, Family, Giant Pancakes) [PG]

Chanice, I am going to be honest with you. If I could think of an excuse that you would buy…I would use it.

In this one, Cindy’s father has a heart attack and Cindy and Bob have to leave town. They can’t take their 3 kids so they call in a favor from their kid’s uncle Buck. Buck has zero idea of what to do with kids so having a rebellious teen, a young girl, and an inquisitive young boy to take care of challenges his purpose in life.

When I start thinking about the best of the best when it comes to John Candy flicks THE GREAT OUTDOORS always comes to mind, but this thing is probably actually better than that movie. I think one thing that I really love about this film is that it just doesn’t care. If you read a lot of my reviews, you know one ingredient I look for in movies is the “I don’t care” factor. This movie does not care what we think, it’s just going for the jugular and actually contains some of the most intense cut-downs found in any movie. I honestly think if this movie were to come out today it would get “canceled” in like 5 seconds. 

A few things stand out about this thing and probably the biggest thing is how you can siphon a heartwarming masterpiece out of a film loaded with so many blistering one-liners. It seems like they were fished out of the Midwestern archive of terrible things to say to terrible people. The other thing is the performances of the cast. Jean Louisa Kelly is still active in Hollywood, but I thought she would end up in a lot more “big movies” after this than she did when she was younger. She’s actually a great actress and has appeared in over 60 projects, but didn’t really land any other major movie roles till ANT-MAN came out in 2015. She crushes this role and might be my favorite part of this movie as Tia, she also gets some character development which helps. The role of Tia almost went to everyone from Ally Sheedy to Molly Ringwald. We also get Macaulay Culkin who kind of dropped off the face of the earth after 1994’s RICHIE RICH. He is great in this as Miles. Gaby Hoffmann also does a great job in this as Maizy and has also kind of fallen off the big career trajectory. She might be most famous for VOLCANO, but to be honest none of this is due to these talents not being incredible. John Candy (SPACEBALLS) plays Uncle Buck and also kills it. 

As far as the pacing goes this movie is really well done. I do like the soundtrack, but with a ton of 80’s songs to turn to around the time, you would think we wouldn’t be getting some of the stuff we did. This is not to say that we don’t get a couple of cool tracks. I liked that this movie happens over a pretty short period of time, but that it still manages to get a full story in and we see character growth with several characters. This gives the movie a bit more depth than we got in a lot of 80’s comedies. 

Overall I love this movie and still use a few of the lines from it in real life. This thing won’t be for everyone, especially in today’s more sensitive climate, but it’s pretty much a classic and it’s definitely a must-see 80’s flick for 80’s lovers. 

I give this one a 7 out of 7. Something I don’t give out for many comedies. 

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