John Candy gives one of his very best performances ever in this touching and funny movie by the great John Hughes. When his brother's wife has an emergency with her parents and they can't find a babysitter they're forced to turn to Candy, a slob and a gambling mess-up with no job. Things start off rough but his heart melts and he may not do things the usual way but he gets the job done and he and the kids all come together and help each other become better people. Nothing in the movie is a big surprise or twist but the kids are great and Candy's performance is hilarious and also so touching.

John Candy was a brilliant performer, I watched him from his start on SCTV, where he honed his craft to perfection. Come to think of it, most of the actors/comedians on that show are brilliant: Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Martin Short, all of whom have turned in star performances at one time or another. Some of the other reviews have said this is his best role, and I tend to agree, Hughes could really get depths of comedy and pathos out of him. The humanity of this film escaped me when I saw it on its release, and at the time I dismissed it as meandering, but Tia's transformation makes much more sense to me now, and the film as a whole works. But there are two things that bother me about the movie, one of them being Cindy's disdain for Buck, who actually doesn't seem like that bad of a guy. She really doesn't like Buck because his girlfriend works in a tire store? The other thing that bothers me is the over-the-top scene with the vice principal, which doesn't fit the rest of the film, the character is too severe and unrealistic, and gives the impression that it was put there to pad out the film or give Candy an opportunity to mine the scene for laughs. All in all, I'm glad I revisited this film thirty years later, I can appreciate Candy even more, despite the fact that he was eating himself to death. Clearly he gained weight during the shooting of the film, he's obviously heavier by the end.

Roger Ebert gave this movie 1,5 stars out of 4. I don't agree, and I think he just didn't understand the slightly misanthropic elements in the humor. Buck is clearly not normal, so why be surprised that he has these dark sides? This movie is watchable and in the end it has a positive message. The fact that Buck is such a hopeless person, maybe he just needed to find himself and also being allowed to be himself? His sister in law can't stand him, but she is frankly not very nice herself, and when she comes back home and her daughter throws herself into her arms and says she loves her, we feel with them all. Another reviewer said it like this: "Buck saves his family and in the end saves himself." I think that is pretty heavy stuff in what is supposed to be a comedy.

I actually wanted to like this movie. I downloaded it because i thought that maybe it would have that Home Alone vibe. And at some point it seemed that maybe the writer/director John Hughes was trying for the same thing. Even the house of the Russell family looked as if they could live on the same street as McCallisters.Unfortunately, this film lacked the main ingredient that made Home Alone so successful. No, not the dumb robbers and the Saw-like traps inducing pain and agony. It failed to be either funny or gripping. The first fifteen minutes pass, and there's not a single good laughing moment. People on the screen are generally unhappy, pouring their problems right on the viewer's head. But to connect with people's problems you need a dramatic approach, that requires character buildup and a fair degree of seriousness. Instead, we have some slapstick-style comedy tricks like a pile of things falling onto a person who doesn't keep his closet tidy or people yelling on the street in the middle of the night and waking up all the neighbors.I admit that after 20 minutes of watching i turned off this movie. But, to be fair, i gave it enough time to raise at least some amount of interest in me, and it just failed. Maybe Uncle Buck has some moments of glory later on, but if a filmmaker hides everything of value under the overly long, lazy, heavy-hearted and plain boring opening, then it means that something's not right in the Hughes kingdom. A movie where the audience has to sit through all the bland stuff to be given something interesting at last is like a fly in in the ointment, only this time it's not a single fly but a swarm of them and the ointment itself is quite so-so.