We’ll never know whether or not Tom Hanks and John Candy might have gone on to become an all-time great comedy duo like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but at least we have a pair of movies to look to in Ron Howard’s 1984 classic Splash and Nicholas Meyer’s 1985 not-so-classic Volunteers. John Candy’s career was tragically cut short by his untimely death in 1994, but his influence lives on, as evidenced in the affirmational and heartbreaking documentary John Candy: I Like Me.
The doc was directed by Colin Hanks, who recently journeyed to New York’s American Museum of Natural History with fellow celebrity offspring Chris Candy to reflect on one of Splash’s most classic sequences: the hectic rescue chase. While there, via The New Yorker, Hanks recalled the first time the Candys and the Hankses took part in a family dinner that occurred around the time of Splash's theatrical premiere. According to Hanks:
Your family came over for dinner. I remember very specifically burying a toy in the sand and then not being able to find it. And having to pull my dad away, saying, like, ‘I know you’re having a nice dinner with your friends, but I need you to find this toy.’ An action figure of some sort.
I suppose it should surprise no one that Tom Hanks was already showcasing some of Woody Pride’s key hero aspects displayed in the Toy Story franchise — that’s right: Woody has a last name — more than a decade before that beloved feature put Pixar on the map. There’s no one better suited for saving action figures and making life better for lost toys, even at the expense of presumably hilarious dinner conversation between the Hanks and Candy families. And for what it's worth: yeah, he found the toy.
Also, though, why isn’t it a more talked-about oddity that Toy Story only came out 11 years after Splash? That just feels wrong in literally all the ways.
It's interesting to think about what kind of toy John Candy might have voiced if he'd still have been alive when that universe sprang to life. I like to think Andy would have had an action figure of the actor's Spaceballs character Barf, allowing Candy to dig into a role he's already familiar with.
For all that the Uncle Buck star could leave audiences rolling in the aisles, Colin Hanks' documentary doesn't shy away from addressing how much of John Candy's happiness and good nature stemmed from darker sources. As he put it:
What really fascinated me was the fact that the things that we love and celebrate about him that are good, that are great, were coping mechanisms from a very, very early trauma. And those coping mechanisms were no longer helping him. They were starting to hurt him.
Colin Hanks and Chris Candy probably have all kinds of amazing and singular family dinner stories between them, with any number of famous faces potentially having shared meals with both fams. Eugene Levy and Dan Levy had to have spent time at the Candys house, right?
John Candy: I Like Me is currently available to stream via Amazon Prime subscription.
