Uncle Buck

Uncle Buck, played by the late John Candy, is the type of character that no American suburb should exclude. Everything about him hurts middle-class behavior, fashions, and wants. Though his antique car needs a muffler and drives around in its permanent cloud of exhaust smoke, Uncle Buck is refreshing.

Besides making a deal off and on, and going to the racetrack, Uncle Buck does not believe in work. He loves cigars that smell and wears clothes that don’t match, either him or each other. Vincent Canby said in his review, “He is the embodiment of all things uncouth that people in the suburbs hope they have left somewhere else.”

In “Uncle Buck,” released in 1989, John Hughes had the good sitcom idea of putting Uncle Buck in the middle of the perfect suburb (Winnetka, IL), in the middle of Hughes’s idea of an average American family. Canby pointed out, “The results are sometimes funny and, in the way of small-screen entertainment, so perfectly predictable that one could mail in the laughs.”

When his brother (Garrett M. Brown) and sister-in-law (Elaine Bromka) are called to Indianapolis, Uncle Buck leaves his superbly good-for-nothing life in Chicago to take care of his two nieces and nephew. The two younger children, Miles (Macaulay Culkin) and Maizy (Gaby Hoffman) are at first shocked by his different methods and then impressed.

The eldest child, Tia, played by Jean Kelly, is a teenage beauty separated from her parents. She is consecutively embarrassed by Uncle Buck’s simple ways and furious at his nosing in her romance with a boy who’s up to no good, played by Jay Underwood. Canby advised, “You don't need a diagram to know how that will come out.”

Canby noted, “As in ''War and Peace,'' it's not the plot that counts.” In “Uncle Buck” it’s watching John Candy dealing with a clown, played by Mike Starr, who arrives for Miles’s birthday party drunk and driving a Volkswagen with large mouse ears. “In the field of live home entertainment,” says the clown, “I am a god.” Says Uncle Buck, “Get in your mouse and leave.”

John Candy is at his best when is sneaky and, at the beginning, completely cruel to the children. So is the film. Canby said, “When ''Uncle Buck'' goes sweet (complete with Chaplinesque music), fun flees. ''Uncle Buck'' is a movie in which saying ''I love you'' to Mom or Dad or Uncle Buck solves all problems except, perhaps, acid rain.”

Canby continued, “Although Mr. Hughes has had huge success with his theatrical movies about teen-agers (''Sixteen Candles,'' ''Ferris Buehler's Day Off,'' among others), he may be the first real auteur of television-style entertainment.”

He knows exactly what he’s doing and does it with attention to necessary detail. The outside of a house in a Hughes film immediately sets up the sentimental nature of the characters within along with the type of movie it is. He can write funny lines. He comes up with charmingly strange situations. Canby said, “Yet there is something unnerving about the way he denatures real life.”

Canby continued, “One doesn't notice this in the limited confines of the small screen. In a movie theater, too many Hughes images are simply big and empty. They are filler material. Dead. Though he likes to shoot on location, the world he records seems phony or, at best, consistently trivial.”

The cast is good, especially Jean Kelly, who not only looks great but may also be an up-and-coming actress. Amy Madigan does well in the very short role of Uncle Buck’s steady if impatient female friend. It is John Candy who gives the film what size it has. He is an entertaining actor through thick and mostly thin.

Believe it or not, this is another movie I knew about for a while and had been thinking about watching it. A few months ago, I found this on Netflix and saw it while exercising. This is another classic that everyone should see. It’s one of Hughes’s funniest films. This film came out before “Home Alone” when Culkin got very popular, so seeing this before that, he did a good job. As stated before, this is mainly a classic due to John Candy, who was a real force to be reckoned with. Check it out and have a great time.

All right, everyone, we have reached the end of “John Hughes Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed the classics I have reviewed of his and hopefully everyone has seen these classics by now, if they haven’t already. If you have, you might be in the same boat as I am where I just thought a film was good or ok.

Check in next month to see what I will review next.

Ferries Bueller’s Day Off

Here is one of the most innocent movies in a long time. A nice, warm-hearted comedy about a teenager who skips school so he can help his best friend earn some self-respect. The therapy he has in mind includes a day’s visit to Chicago. After we’ve seen the Sears Tower, the Art Institute, the Board of Trade, a parade down Dearborn Street, architectural landmarks, a Gold Coast, and a game at Wrigley Field, we have to allow the city and state film offices have done their jobs: If “Ferries Bueller’s Day Off,” released in 1986, fails on every other level, at least it works as a travelogue.

However, it does work on at least a few other levels. The movie stars Matthew Broderick as Ferris, a smart high school senior from the North Shore who feigns illness to spend a day in town with his girlfriend, Sloane (Mia Sara), and his best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck).

Initially, it looks like skipping school is all he has thought of – especially after he talks Cameron into borrowing his dad’s repaired red Ferrari, a car the father loves more than Cameron himself.

Roger Ebert said in his review, “The body of the movie is a lighthearted excursion through the Loop, including a German-American Day parade in which Ferris leaps aboard a float, grabs a microphone and starts singing "Twist and Shout" while the marching band backs him up. The teens fake their way into a fancy restaurant for lunch, spend some time gawking at the masterpieces in the Art Institute, and then go out to Wrigley Field, where, of course, they are late and have to take box seats far back in the left-field corner.” (The movie gets that detail right. It would be too much to hope that they could arrive in the third inning and find seats in the bleachers.) There is one great moment when the teens visit the top of the Sears Tower, lean forward, press themselves against the glass, look straight down at the small cars and little parts of life down below, and begin to talk about their lives. Subtly, that introduces the buried theme of the movie, which is that Ferris wants to help Cameron get self-respect in the face of his father’s materialism.

Ferris is a little like a preacher. He says the famous line of the movie, “Life goes by so fast that if you don’t stop and look around, you might miss it.” Ebert said, “He's sensitive to the hurt inside his friend's heart, as Cameron explains how his dad has cherished and restored the red Ferrari and given it a place of honor in his life - a place denied to Cameron.”

Ebert credited, “Ferris Bueller" was directed by John Hughes, the philosopher of adolescence, whose credits include "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club" and "Pretty In Pink." In every one of his films, adults are strange, distant beings who love their teenagers, but fail to completely understand them. That’s the obvious issue: All of the adults, including an awkward high-school principal, played by Jeffrey Jones, are dim-witted and one-dimensional. The movie’s solutions to Cameron’s problems are very simplistic. However, the film’s heart is in the right place, and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is small, quirky, and sweet.

I know people love this movie and consider it one of the great classics, but I just thought of this as good. I like the movie; I just don’t love it like everyone else does. I still say you should check this out because you might like this movie a lot, maybe more than I did. You have Ben Stein in here constantly saying, “Bueller,” and a cameo appearance by Charlie Sheen in a police station. See this one if you would like.

Stay tuned next week when we end “John Hughes Month” with another classic film. Once again, I would like to apologize for the late posting as I completely forgot what day of the week it was.

Pretty in Pink

Roger Ebert started his review of the 1986 film, “Pretty in Pink,” by saying, “Although "Pretty in Pink" contains several scenes that are a great deal more dramatic, my favorite moments were the quietest ones, in which nothing was being said because a boy was trying to get up the courage to ask a girl out on a date, and she knew it, and he knew it, and still nothing was happening.”

To be able to listen to this silence is to understand the main problem of adolescence, which is that their dreams are much larger than their confidence. “Pretty in Pink” is a movie that pays attention to these matters. Even though this is not a great movie, it has some moments when the audience is likely to think, yes, being 16 was exactly like that.

The movie stars Molly Ringwald as Andie Walsh, a poor girl from the bad side of town. Her mother abandoned her when she was a child, and she lives with her unemployed father, played by Harry Dean Stanton, whose first words after she wakes him one morning are, “Where am I?” Ebert noted, “Andie works in a record store in a downtown mall and wears fashions that seem thrown together by a collision between a Goodwill store and a 1950s revival.”

Andie goes to high school where most of the kids are from wealthy parents, and she has a crush on a rich kid named Blane, played by Andrew McCarthy.

Ebert mentioned, “Her best friends are Duckie (Jon Cryer), who is a case study of the kind of teenage boy who thinks he can clown his way into a girl's heart, and Iona (Annie Potts), a 30ish sprite who affects one radical hairstyle after another.”

The movie’s plot is very old. It’s about how the rich boy and the poor girl love each other, but the rich kid’s friends are snobs, and the poor girl doesn’t want anyone to know what an untidy home she lives in, and about how they find true love after all. Ebert said, “Since the basic truths in the movie apply to all teenagers, rich and poor, I wish the filmmakers would have found a new plot to go along with them.”

Ebert continued, “Perhaps they could have made the lovers come from different ethnic groups, which wouldn't have been all that original, either, but at least would have avoided one more recycling of ancient Horatio Alger stories.”

Ebert went on, “There is one other major problem with the movie, and that involves the character of Steff McKee (James Spader), the effete, chain-smoking rich snob who is Blane's best friend. He has been turned down several times by Andie and now pretends to be appalled that Blane would want to go out with such a "mutant."” His snobbery almost ruins the romance.

Steff does have one great line of dialogue: “Money really means nothing to me. Do you think I’d treat my parents’ house this way if it did?” But, as played by Spader, he looks much too old to be a teenager, and his scenes play restlessly for that reason. Ebert said, “He seems more like a sinister 25-year-old still lurking in the high school corridors, the Ghost of Proms Past.”

Those problems mentioned, “Pretty in Pink” is a heartwarming and most truthful movie, with some nice moments of humor. Ebert noted, “The movie was written by John Hughes, who repeats the basic situation of his "Sixteen Candles," which starred Ringwald as a girl who had a crush on a senior boy, and learned to communicate with the class geek. But Ringwald is becoming an actress who can project poignancy and vulnerability without seeming corny or coy, and her scenes here with Cryer and Potts have one moment of small truth after another.”

The nicest surprise in the movie is the character created by Potts. Ebert mentioned, “The first time we see her, she's dressed in leather and chains, but the next time, she wears one of those beehive hairdos from the early 1960s.” She is always testing her “look,” and when she finally settles on conservative good taste, the choice seems like her most radical so far.

Ebert said, “"Pretty in Pink" is evidence, I suppose, that there must be a reason why certain old stories never seem to die.” We know all the cliches, we can predict half of the moments. However, in the end, when this boy and this girl, who are so obviously meant for one another, finally get together, there is great satisfaction. Ebert ended his review by saying, “There also is the sense that Ringwald just might have that subtle magic that will allow her, like the young Elizabeth Taylor, to grow into an actress who will keep on breaking and mending boys' hearts for a long time.”

This is another movie that I have been thinking about seeing for some time. Recently, I found this film on Paramount+ and decided to watch it. This is a classic that I cannot believe I have never seen. Check it out if you haven’t. You will love it, I promise.

Next week I will be looking at another classic that I just found to be good in “John Hughes Month.” Sorry for the late posting. I had completely forgotten about the day because I had family over and I was tired from work.

The Breakfast Club

In “The Breakfast Club,” released in 1985, five students at a Chicago suburban high school vent their problems to each other during nine hours of detention one Saturday in 1984.

Their main topic, as they open up, is their parents, who don't understand them and make their lives terrible by paying too much attention to them or not enough.

“My home life is unsatisfying,” says a student. Another says, “Well, everyone's home life is unsatisfying. Otherwise, nobody would ever leave home.” Someone asks, “Are we gonna be like our parents?” The reply: “It's unavoidable. When you grow up, your heart dies.”

The father (Ron Dean) of the jock (Emilio Estevez) does his thinking for him. The brain (Anthony Michael Hall) has thought of committing suicide because his father (John Hughes) demands straight A's. The harsh father of the rebel (Judd Nelson) beats him.

When they finish explaining what's wrong with their parents, they analyze their other big problem: peer pressure. These five kids -- the three boys and two girls, an upper-middle-class princess (Molly Ringwald), and a genetic loner (Ally Sheedy), acknowledge they are prisoners of a student caste system that segregates them.

Joseph Gelmis said in his review, “It should be clear, at this point, that "The Breakfast Club" is a group therapy variation on an otherwise familiar collective portrait of a high school class. Virtually the entire movie takes place inside the lofty school library and a few other rooms in the building.” The two adults in the school are the principal (Paul Gleason), a jailer and bully for a day, and the janitor (John Kapelos), a realist who knows too many of the school’s secrets to be a critic.

Gelmis mentioned, “Given the simplistic treatment of subject matter and the dramatic limitations of confining the cast and action to a single set, "The Breakfast Club" is slightly more interesting than one might expect. Writer-director John Hughes, whose previous film was "Sixteen Candles," choreographs the moves and verbal sparring and intimate disclosures of his young performers like a ritual tribal ceremony.”

Gelmis continued, “Nelson, as the troublemaker Bender, is very effective in the role of the provocateur who disrupts the orderliness of the detention session and leads the others in defying the rules. ("Being bad is fun, huh?" he says with a leer, before turning them on with pot.)” Nelson has the best lines in the movie. When he first enters the detention room, he insults the principal: "Does Barry Manilow know you raided his closet?"

Bender and the principal are sworn enemies. Gelmis noted, “And Bender's inflammatory disrespect goads the dean into a sanctimonious fury. It takes a few beers in the basement with the janitor, apparently a contemporary of his, to cool the dean down.” "If you were 16," the janitor asks the principal, "what would you think of you?" The principal shakes his head.

As each of the five students does his or her emotional venting, we have to respect their pain. Gelmis noted, “To share the growing pains of troubled kids is to become a godparent. You owe them your goodwill and best wishes.” Finally, that's all these five students can suggest. Nothing changes. You hear nothing you haven't heard before. However, you know that for them it is happening for the first time, and they deserve compassion. Gelmis ended his review by saying, “I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to see "The Breakfast Club".”

My sister and I tried to watch this on Netflix some years back, and we couldn’t watch it after about 45 minutes. I did go back and rewatch after a couple of years past as, if I remember correctly, a rental from the library, but I’m not a fan. People consider this film a classic, but I thought it was ok. Maybe if I had grown up around the time the film was released, I would have had a different thought about it, which is why I just think this is an average film. If you want to watch this, it is currently streaming on Max, but I don’t highly recommend it.

Next week I will be looking at another classic film in “John Hughes Month.”

Mr. Mom

For March, I will dedicate it to one of the greatest directors of all time, John Hughes. Let’s get this month started with the 1987 classic, “Mr. Mom.”

Francis Rizzo III started his review by saying, “Everything old is new again, be it the fear of nuclear war or the looming spectre of economic disaster.” An 80s comedy like “Mr. Mom” remains very relevant. Jack (Michael Keaton) has been furloughed from his job as an engineer with a car company and, as he hasn’t been able to find a job, his wife Caroline (Teri Garr) finds a job in an advertising company, leaving Jack to be a stay-at-home dad to look after their three children (Frederick Koehler, Taliesin Jaffe, and Courtney & Brittany White). In a less rational time (and in the hands of one of the great writers John Hughes), this is a huge challenge for Jack and a threat to his masculinity and his marriage (thanks, partly, to the awkward pursuit of local promiscuous Joan, played by Ann Jillian).

Rizzo said, “Surprisingly, the film doesn't take the easy "dumb dad" route of making it just about how manly Jack can't cope with "women's work", even though he does struggle with simple tasks like diaper changing and meal prep, as Hughes' script includes several scenes of near-cartoonish coordinated chaos to intimate that a homemaker's life is not an easy one.” Caroline has her problems, like being a newly returned mom who is disrespected by her co-workers (despite having a college degree and experience in the field) and being an attractive woman makes her the target of her harassing boss, played by Leon Carp from “Roseanne,” Willard Kraft from “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” Vlad from “Danny Phantom,” and Gene Parmesan from “Arrested Development,” Martin Mull. However, as she begins to succeed at her job and Jack settles into domesticity, their changed positions lead to new issues in their relationship (including some gender-swapped takes on classic marriage tropes, like the idea of letting yourself go.)

There’s not a clear plot to “Mr. Mom” that gets the film from beginning to end, but the details of Jack’s lost job (featuring Jeffrey Tambor as a by-the-books boss) and the potential for Joan to break up Jack and Caroline’s marriage are often-present to create drama and a sense that things are moving forward. (Why a single woman like Joan would be so insistent on an affair with a guy who can’t find a job and doesn’t have his life together is a mystery the film doesn’t try to solve.) Rizzo noted, “At one point, a lengthy fantasy scene crops up (with some legitimately funny beats), but it serves mainly to point out how aimless the film is at many points. Yes, Caroline has a big project at work, but that only really sets up the possibility for more harassment from Ron, but Jack's journey and, for lack of a better word, redemption, lacks in motivation and agency. The whole film builds to a humorously disorderly moment that only feels like a payoff because it arrives about 90 minutes after the film started.”

Despite not having a real story (and instead stuck in small moments of domestic life and “What if mom was a dad?” jokes like playing poker for coupons), “Mr. Mom” is driven by performances, led by Keaton (in his first feature lead) and Garr. Rizzo credited, “It would be hard to pair two better, more underrated actors than this duo, with Keaton putting his trademark mix of humor and unhinged insanity on proper display (getting darker than you'd expect at points for a comedy), and Garr reminding us why she is always a delight to watch at work, nevering having to try too hard to earn a laugh.” They are supported by a lot of quality performances, including some enjoyably cute child actors (Koehler and Jaffe) as the couple’s boys, Miriam Flynn as a nosy neighbor, and Christopher Lloyd and Tom Leopold in a fun, small part (along with cameos by Edie McClurg and Pattie Deutsch).

Rizzo noted, “Director Stan Dragoti made several solid comedies between 1979 and 1991, working well with likable stars like Keaton and Garr (as he did with Tom Hanks and Scott Bakula), but the visual flair he hints at here in small doses wouldn't really come to the forefront until his next film, The Man with One Red Shoe.” The film moves well through Hughes’ brand of dynamic comedy but still hits a few brief moments of depth. There’s just not a lot of self-reflection on Jack’s part (as Hughes was still a few years away from his best works of suburban therapy). Rizzo said, “Some sort of through-line that gave Jack more agency could have made Mr. Mom a more cohesive film, but as it is, it's an opportunity to enjoy Keaton and Garr in a lighthearted, if unspectacular comedy.”

There’s nothing that makes “Mr. Mom” stand out in a crowd of 80s comedies, except for the performances of Keaton and Garr, but that’s honestly enough to make it worth watching, as they are both enjoyable to watch, and the movie has enough going on to never stall, even if it’s never really going anywhere.

I had always said I would watch this film, but I never got around to it until a while ago. Now that I have finally seen it, I can say that this film is worth seeing. Check it out if you haven’t because this is nice to see Michael Keaton before he did the darker roles in the years following this film. Especially since this was made at a time when fathers were not seen as stay-at-home parents, but now we can see them as that, even though stay-at-home parents are not as common as they used to be.

Sorry for the late posting. I was tired coming back from work then I was called for a couple of tasks. Stay tuned next week for the next installment of “John Hughes Month.”