Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that the swearing in this movie is pretty intense for a PG film, and there is attempted teen sex (nothing explicitly shown, but no doubt what's going on) and a mistaken belief that adult sex has taken place. Buck pretends to be psychotic, capable of torture-murder and mutilation with power tools, as he intimidates a grubby boy trying to get intimate with his niece. Buck also indulges in drinking, smoking, and gambling.
Families can talk about the conflicts between the various characters. Do you think Buck could have handled bad-girl Tia in a more productive way? Do you believe the way the story comes out? Has Buck himself grown up a little by the end? What do you think will happen between him and Chanice?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
Prolific 1980s and '90s kid-comedy hit machine John Hughes wrote and directed this OK farce that came after a string of films such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off that made adolescent subculture seem way more hip and sympathetic than adulthood. Who would ever want to grow up? But in UNCLE BUCK a Hughes-penned adult hero exhibits both the virtues and the drawbacks of acting like a big kid. The benefits outweigh the negatives, though -- or at least that's the case Hughes tries to make.
Buck Russell (John Candy), 40, is a bachelor living in a messy apartment right next to Wrigley Field in Chicago, and stringing along an exasperated girlfriend of eight years, Chanice (Amy Madigan), who wants to get married and have babies while she still can. Buck is the black sheep of the Russells, a guy who won't get a job and lives off of sports betting. He gets a rare phone call from his brother's family, who recently moved to the affluent Chicago suburbs, and it's an emergency. His sister in-law's father suffered a heart attack, and mom and dad need Buck to watch the kids while they go out of town.
Buck walks into an uncomfortable household situation. The littlest girl and boy get along great with the big, goofy teddy-bear uncle. But 15-year-old niece Tia (Jean Kelly) positively loathes Buck. She's still upset at being uprooted from their old Indianapolis home and friends and moved to Chicago, and her resentment and teen rebellion against her mother takes the form of insulting everyone with her haughty sarcasm, dressing in grown-up haute couture, and hanging with a vaguely "goth" party crowd in and out of the high school.
Tia's disagreeable all right. Eventually her ongoing feud with Buck crosses the line and causes genuine pain. But you get the feeling the girl is just imitating, in caricature, typically snotty grown-ups on her side of the tracks.
Like he did in Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, Hughes makes it seem like class structure in America (at least Chicago) is just as divisive as the dukedoms and commoners in Jane Austen's backyard. Tia's family dwells in a big white house in a society of upscale, uptight types. Easygoing Buck, meanwhile, never graduated from college and is proud of his backfiring old car, his racetrack buddies, and his nights at the bowling alley. But he's also got a possible drinking problem and really cares about losing Chanice. When Buck agrees to watch the kids, it not only helps him avoid a job Chanice lined up for him, it's supposed to prove to her that he can be a responsible parent-like figure. In spite of himself.
There's enough slapstick and falling-down stuff with Candy acting goofy to please viewers not looking for heavy stuff, and the acting is all on target. Yes, that's Macaulay Culkin as the youngest Russell boy, before he became a child-actor superstar in Hughes' hit Home Alone.
Candy, meanwhile, got an even better role courtesy of Hughes as a Buck-like character in the more mature romantic comedy Only the Lonely. Candy fans will also enjoy Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Splash.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentWhen Buck swears and wrestles with an uncooperative washing machine, an eavesdropper thinks he's having rough sex. Talk of teen pregnancy in the case of Tia and her boyfriend, who clearly wants to go all the way with her. |
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Violence"Comedic" stuff, as Buck punches out a drunk and threatens his niece's unwanted boyfriend with kidnapping and torture-dismemberment. |
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LanguagePretty intense for a PG, with repeated variations on "s--t" and "goddamn," and "pissant." Both children and adults talk like that. |
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Social BehaviorBuck's oddball ways and plain-spoken style of dealing with things supposedly mends a bad family rift here. Still, he's a drinker, glutton, smoker, and gambler and chronically jobless, even though he shows enough responsibility to protect his troubled niece. Folks on the Russell's (rich) side of town come across as intrinsically chilly and nasty; Buck's (poor) side of town is more down to earth and homey. |
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CommercialismFood products, auto parts brands are prominent, as is oldies music. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoTeen and adult drinking; a hostile, drunken party clown, and Buck himself getting plastered. Buck brags about quitting. |
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