I fell in love with John Sweet the second I noticed him serve up these shovel-sized pancakes in “Uncle Buck.” John Hughes wrote the a part of Uncle Buck particularly for Sweet, and the uncle’s affection for his nieces and nephew was true in actual life too.
Now, over 30 years after Sweet’s dying in 1994, comes a brand new documentary “John Sweet: I Like Me,” stuffed with humorous anecdotes a couple of man just about everybody preferred and likewise what being that man value him. Directed by Colin Hanks, it premiered on opening night time of the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant with Hanks, producer Ryan Reynolds, and Sweet’s kids, co-executive producers Chris Sweet and Jennifer Sweet-Sullivan, onstage for a post-screening Q&A.
In the event you already cherished John Sweet, this doc will make you like him much more. In the event you have been born after his time, will probably be a stunning introduction. Nonetheless, the best way the doc lingers on its unabashed celebration of Sweet’s life and work but rushes by means of its transient examination of his psyche prevents it from being a complete knockout.
From Sweet’s SCTV improv buddies—Martin Quick, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Dave Corridor, Andrea Martin—to Hollywood collaborators like Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, and Mel Brooks, to shut buddies Dan Aykroyd and Invoice Murray, the movie is overflowing with family names. A historical past of the Toronto sketch comedy scene runs as a handy subplot.
A number of the most memorable commentary comes from Invoice Murray, who’s the primary and final individual to seem. On the premiere, Reynolds stated Murray was the toughest individual to e book. After many unreturned calls and even ghosting a set date, Reynolds lastly acquired Murray to agree when he despatched him a video of his then two-year-old son saying, “Do the interview.”
Murray units up one of many narrative difficulties of the movie: John Sweet was virtually a saint, and it’s arduous to seek out individuals who have something adverse to say. The movie leans into this and focuses totally on celebrating Sweet, who appeared in additional than 30 movies and died of a coronary heart assault alone in his lodge room on a shoot in Durango, Mexico. He was 43 years outdated. We study early on that Sweet’s personal father, whom he strongly resembled, died of a coronary heart assault when John was simply 5. He lived with the worry that he too would meet an early grave like his father.
The slew of interviews from household, buddies, and colleagues types the skeleton of the movie, alongside clips from Sweet’s intensive filmography courting again to the mid-Nineteen Seventies. The archival footage of Sweet — on set and at house along with his youngsters — provides the movie vitality, and the intimate, relaxed settings the place interviewees recount reminiscences of the person who left their lives too quickly evoke house and maintain the movie collectively visually. The rating consists of heart-wrenching music sung by a poised Cynthia Erivo, recorded particularly for the movie. It’s a honest lovefest, heat with out being cloying.
However Hanks’ second documentary function has a basic downside: it lacks editorial self-discipline. In different phrases, it’s too lengthy. The reason being downside to have — too many beloved stars who not often give interviews and genuinely needed to speak about Sweet. For instance, the now 40-something Macaulay Culkin, who recollects the fatherly care and bond he felt with Sweet at a time when his personal father and supervisor was neglecting the kid megastar, has among the most attention-grabbing issues to say about Sweet, however doesn’t seem till the final act. However the latest interview with Dan Akroyd, whereas good to see him on digital camera once more, added little or no to Sweet’s narrative and will’ve been left on the reducing room ground.
Too typically the strain between who Sweet was to others and who he was to himself will get misplaced, veering away from the “I Like Me” ethos. (That line comes from one other John Hughes’ movie, “Planes, Trains and Vehicles,” wherein Sweet performs a lovable loser reverse Steve Martin.)
One of many locations the place the film reaches past merely getting the band again collectively once more is when Sweet’s son Chris says that in his father’s final years “his thoughts was obese,” complicating the narrative that Sweet was unjustly lumped in with “dwelling quick and dying younger.” On high of consuming his emotions — to not point out smoking and consuming them — Sweet, based on his son, a private coach, and others included within the doc, more and more suffered from anxiousness and panic assaults as his profession slowed and his obligations as a businessman grew. Conan O’Brien, recalling when the Harvard Lampoon workers introduced Sweet to campus, provides a salient level: “The hazard of this enterprise is that it’s very unhealthy for folks pleasers.”
What the movie finally attracts out is that it wasn’t simply Sweet’s weight that killed him, however a poisonous mixture of hysteria, stress, and genetic predisposition to coronary heart illness and weight problems. In the end the movie positions Sweet’s legacy as one in all a good man and a proficient performer who, as his daughter Jennifer says, “took care of individuals,” on and off set. However simply as essential is the way it unravels the lengthy shadow forged by a five-year-old boy’s method of dealing with the traumatic lack of a dad or mum.
Many interviewees, like Catherine O’Hara and Sweet’s “Splash” castmate Tom Hanks, stated that whether or not performing or not, Sweet was extraordinarily current once you have been with him. But the movie doesn’t present sufficient area for us to really feel that presence. Viewers don’t get a lot of an opportunity to sit down with the particulars of Sweet’s life earlier than the movie strikes on to the following anecdote. One longs to see a full scene of Sweet in motion onscreen or in a house video, fairly than simply snippets. There additionally wasn’t sufficient of Sweet talking for himself, fairly than folks telling us how nice he was.
The interviews from the SCTV crew, who had a front-row seat to Sweet earlier than and after he turned a star, have been essentially the most compelling. The doc would have benefitted from extra of Catherine O’Hara, proven within the movie giving a touching tribute at Sweet’s 1994 funeral, whose commentary felt particularly wealthy however truncated.
Ultimately, Hanks delivers , however not nice, portrait of a lovable man whose shortcomings took him out — an atypical man with extraordinary expertise who stays top-of-the-line comedic actors of the twentieth century.
Grade: B-
“John Sweet: I Like Me” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant. It is going to stream on Prime Video starting on October 10.
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