When director John Hughes released "Uncle Buck," a 1989 comedy starring John Candy as the titular character, it was met with mixed reviews. The story follows Buck as he gets called out from the city to the Chicago suburbs to care for his brother's three kids — played by Jean Louisa Kelly, Gaby Hoffman and Macaulay Culkin — while their parents are out of town. Like most of Candy's characters, Buck is big-hearted and pretty lovable, but Hughes, who also wrote the film, gave him a bit of an edge that unnerved some viewers.
He's a hard-drinker, weighed down by horse-racing debt and the seeming inability to commit to a job or to Chanice, his long-term girlfriend (Amy Madigan). "The movie is filled with good intentions and good feelings, but they seem to conceal another side of Uncle Buck," wrote critic Roger Ebert at the time. "A side that makes the movie feel creepy and subtly unwholesome."
