Review: "Uncle Buck"

John Hughes is the director of this film. Need I say more?

I've heard about the film before, and I wanted to give it a try, even though reviews online looked not so great from critics. However, audiences loved it, and I'm always in the mood for a laugh-out-loud comedy. So is that what I got? Yeah, pretty much.

First off, John Candy gives a great performance as the titular character, who is a lazy, unemployed middle-aged man living in a single room apartment. Then he gets called up to watch over his brother's kids, and the rest is just pure fun, with a good bit of character development as well. Jean Louisa Kelly acts just like a teenager in her role as Buck's older niece, who is fed up with him interfering with her "teenage-y" life. Macaulay Culkin and Gaby Hoffmann are surprisingly great as the younger kids in the family, and they killed their performances.

The comedy is also great, and at one point Buck even tells the assistant principal of the school where his nephew and younger niece go to go downtown and get a rat to gnaw a bump off her face. What's even better, a kid was sitting outside as a kid waiting to go to the principal's office, and he was giggling the whole time. The cool thing is that he didn't know he was being recorded for the film, which makes it authentic and not forced.

However, there is a lot of character development. Tia, Buck's older niece, finds out the guy she was dating was cheating on her. Buck actually gets revenge for her by barging in on him with another girl and taping his mouth shut and his hands together. Then he puts him in the back of his trunk and hits golf balls at him when he starts talking some smack. This also causes Tia and Buck to reconcile and for Tia to not be so emotionally distant from her parents. Buck also changes his ways and earns back the trust of the woman he truly loves.

All in all, critic reviews don't really mean much, as this film proves. I have never laughed more at a film than this one, and it would be a great pick for a movie night (although the PG rating is to be debated, considering the amount of profanity in the film).

RATING: 9/10