‘John Candy: I Like Me,’ a portrait of the late actor, opens the Toronto International Film Festival with laughter, tears, and more laughter
By David Fear Rolling Stone
September 5, 2025
Long before John Candy became a household name outside of Canada, the comedian would occasionally adopt a persona that his friends and colleagues dubbed “Johnny Toronto.” Unlike the often shy, overly genial guy who used to disappear into the background of Second City ensemble scenes, Johnny was brash, bold, a guy who had the city in his back pocket. You want a reservation at the hottest joint in town? Johnny Toronto has got you covered. Who just bought a round of drinks for the whole bar? Johnny Toronto is the guy picking up the tab. Hey, where did all those pretty ladies go? They just got into Johnny Toronto’s limo and are heading out to the club.
It was another character that Candy created, a fictional mover and shaker that he could trot out as easily as the showbiz suck-up William B. Williams, the egomaniacal Johnny LaRue, or the polka-music legend Yosh Schmenge. This one just happened to exist in the real world as opposed to the small screen. He shared the actor’s generosity of spirit and love of a good time. Unlike Candy, Johnny Toronto was confident, cool, unflappable — the alpha alter ego, often used to hide insecurities about his size, his insecurities, the hole carved into his giant heart from a central trauma that he never got over. The cruel world could crush Candy. Nothing could harm Johnny Toronto.
Fake surname or not, there may not have been a more appropriate movie to kick off the 50th Toronto International Film Festival than John Candy: I Like Me, an extremely loving tribute to a Canadian icon who was, by all accounts, the easiest guy in the world to love. Produced by superfan Ryan Reynolds and directed by Colin Hanks, this documentary isn’t full of jaw-dropping revelations and dug-up dirt; it opens, in fact, with Candy’s fellow Second City partner Bill Murray complaining that no one, including himself, will have a bad thing to say about the guy. (To his credit, Murray eventually remembers one anecdote about Candy “milking” his lines during a staged reading of a play directed by Sydney Pollock.) There isn’t a dark side that gets dragged into the light, though you’ll hear about Candy experiencing dark nights of the soul. This is the polar opposite of, say, a project designed to be controversial, confrontational and put TIFF on the defensive. It’s a valentine to someone who, 31 years after his death at age 43, remains one of the Great White North’s favorite sons. And it will break your heart.
Candy didn’t wear that particular internal organ on his sleeve so much as model whole outfits made out of it, and the sheer abundance of his authentic niceness is I Like Me‘s prime running motif. As Murray rightfully predicts, no one has a bad thing to say about John, though you’ll hear a lot of concern expressed over how his sensitivity meant he bruised easily, and the way that his people-pleasing tendencies left him drained and exhausted. The early trauma of his dad dying from a heart attack in his thirties, which happened when John was just five years old, left a void in Candy that he spent decades trying to fill with food and drink. And applause, naturally — he was a performer, after all — though you won’t hear stories about adulation addiction here. This film is here to praise him and, regrettably, bury him, just not in a metaphorical sense. That Hanks shows you Candy’s funeral in 1994 and plays longtime friend Dan Aykroyd‘s eulogy over scenes of John horsing around with his kids, goofing around on set, etc., right up front, makes this perfectly clear. But it’s meant to celebrate the man first and foremost. I Like Me loves John. So does everyone who speaks on the record here, from Steve Martin to Tom Hanks to his SCTV costars to his family members. So do you.
The movie traces his early years, when a busted knee forced him to refocus his energy toward the stage. Friends essentially trick him into auditioning for the newly opened Second City in Toronto, and he gets in by virtue of a scene where he lets his scene partner yammer on while he simply listens and nods. His work with the improv group and his friendship with the cast of the legendary 1972 production of Godspell (which gets its own loving documentary at the fest this year as well) leads him to becoming part of SCTV, a sketch series that starts as a riposte to SNL and ends up surpassing it in terms of quality, if not longevity. If nothing else, Hanks’ doc serves as a reminder of how brilliant that show was, and how mind-bogglingly brilliant Candy was on it. Conan O’Brien, who once spent a day with Candy after inviting him to visit Harvard to receive an honorary award, tells the story of seeing a skit entitled “Yellowbelly,” in which Candy played the biggest coward in the wild west. It ends with him shooting a mother and child (!) in the back. O’Brien calls it his “Oppenheimer moment” in terms of humor. You can 100-percent see why.