"Bachelor and all round slob, Buck, babysits his brother's rebellious teenage daughter and her cute younger brother and sister." (IMDb)
There wasn´t a decent UC thread to be found around the Rewind so i made a new one. I don´t know, maybe it tells something.
This is not among my favorite John hughes films but despite that it does include lots of good jokes and dialogue. John Candy is of course on fire here and i also like Gaby Hoffman and Macaulay Culkin. Great chemistry between these three. What i don´t like that much are the parents Elaine Bromka/Garrett M. Brown and the family teen Tia played by Jean Louisa Kelly. The acting just looks too "forced" IMO.
Hughes loaned some from his Mr. Mom script (the crazy washing machine, sexhungry neighbor) and also got the idea for Home Alone during one of the Culkin scenes.
The year was 1989 and you could hear rap music in a John Hughes movie soundtrack... oh boy...
If you like John Candy you have to see this one but i still think that it´s far away from masterpices like Ferris and Planes, Trains & Automobiles.
What i didn´t know is that there was Uncle Buck tv show back in 1990 and another one in 2016 with African-American cast. Anyone seen these?
Any thoughts about the film?
Posts: 7054 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2008 | Site Updates: 7
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I consider it the strong middle jewel of the Hughes-Candy trilogy, not quite as good as PT&A but a definitive step above The Great Outdoors. It's no surprise many fans consider Buck Russell one of Candy's very best characters, as he's both hilarious and inflective in the role, taking what could have been a one dimensional character and making him something special. You just have to love Buck even when he's slacking off or doing something considered outside of normal mores. From today's perspective, I love that Hughes took a more positive take towards a family moving; in today's cinema, it's standard practice for all the children to be furious at the move and refuse to budge from this viewpoint until the parents cave in with a genuine apology, and we're supposed to be in their corner no matter how cold-hearted they are. But Hughes in his prime was too smart for that, and it's refreshing to see Miles and Maizy willing to give life in Shermer, no matter how rocky at first, a fair try, and while we do sympathize with how Tia's feeling, we still acknowledge she's very much wrong. The soundtrack may not be the best in a Hughesian production, but it's surprisingly solid overall; Hugh Harris's Rhythm of Life is one of my favorite underrated movie themes.
I never saw either series, and have no intention to: Candy is the one and only true Buck Russell no matter executives might think. Now the original might have been saved if the team behind it had decide to take a Statler and Waldorf style approach to it: have bookends and maybe a midshow segment featuring the movie cast watching the show and commenting on it (a minute or so each, so no major pressure on anyone's schedules in theory), therefore admitting it's a spinoff they're putting on and using the best incarnations of the characters for context.
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