This Box Office Dud Is Actually John Candy’s Best Movie

The Big Picture

• John Candy was a comedic legend who showcased dramatic acting potential through
  Only the Lonely
  .
• The film, a remake of
  Marty
  , was a departure from Candy’s usual comedic roles, highlighting his versatility.
• Candy’s raw and pained portrayal in
  Only the Lonely
  revealed his ability to blend comedy and drama seamlessly.

March 4th marked thirty years since John Candy left this world at just the age of 43. His death, which came after a heart attack while filming Wagon’s East, was a shock to fans worldwide, but in his short career, Candy left a lasting legacy as one of our greatest comedic actors. From his time on SCTV, to his domination of the 1980s with movies like Spaceballs and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, John Candy was one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars. In 1991, a year after his cameo in the monster hit Home Alone, Candy reunited with Chris Columbus and John Hughes for Only the Lonely. This time he was the lead, and although the film, which co-starred Maureen O’Hara and Ally Sheedy, was a box office dud, it showcased Candy in a new way. The laughs were still there, but Only the Lonely is also a heartbreaking drama that showcased how great of an actor he was. Had John Candy lived, Only the Lonely showed the path his career could have taken.

John Candy Was Already a Comedy Legend Before ‘Only the Lonely’

With how much John Candy worked with John Hughes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Candy was from Chicago. Instead, he was born in Toronto and found his initial fame on Second City Television (SCTV), Canada’s version of Saturday Night Live, which also aired on NBC just like SNL. Before he was ever a movie star, he was already a known name in comedy. But then came his film career.

Candy had a minor role in The Blues Brothers, and had a bigger one the next year in Stripes, but it was the mid to late 80s when Candy really took off, first with Splash, then major comedies such as Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Great Outdoors, and Uncle Buck, which were all either written or directed by John Hughes. In 1990, Candy was part of his biggest movie in a minor role for Home Alone, which was written by Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. A year before, Macaulay Culkin had been the co-star to Candy in Uncle Buck, and now things were the other way around, although Culkin and Candy shared no scenes this time around, unfortunately. Candy had made his name as a bouncy, extroverted comedy icon, a man of a bigger stature who sometimes used his weight as a joke, but not to the level of a Chris Farley, who reveled in self-depreciation and physical humor. In 1991, Candy would get to explore another side of his personality and show that he was much more than a comedian, but a one-of-a-kind actor.

‘Only the Lonely’ Is a Remake of 1995’s ‘Marty’

Hughes and Columbus decided to work together again, this time with Hughes as producer, and Columbus writing and directing their next project, a remake of 1955’s Marty called Only the Lonely. The original film was a romantic comedy starring Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair, with Borgnine as the film’s namesake, an awkward man in his mid-30s who still lives at home with his mother when he finally meets the love of his life. In the remake, Candy was cast in the Marty role as a character now named Danny Muldoon, a Chicago cop who lives with his overbearing, widowed mother, Rose (Maureen O’Hara), when he meets Theresa, played by Ally Sheedy, another John Hughes alum from The Breakfast Club. Culkin is also in Only the Lonely, albeit in a small role. Danny is sad and lonely, with his sense of humor still intact, and Theresa is extremely shy, making their love story one that is unconventional for a major studio movie, but also powerful in its realism.

Now, in 1991, John Candy and romantic comedy seemed like two things that didn’t go together, but if you’ve ever seen the last act of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, then you knew Candy was capable of being a dramatic actor who could tug at your heartstrings. Candy, as Del Griffith, spends most of the film annoying the hell out of Steve Martin‘s cranky Neal Page. But when Neal walks into the train station at the end to find Del alone, who then confesses that he has no home to go to because the wife he’s been talking about has been dead for years, well, you’d have to be soulless to not get emotional. In the dropped look on his face and just a few lines, you can feel Del’s pain and love for his spouse, a pain and love so deep that it seems to spread to Candy himself.

Only the Lonely was a dud at the box office, making just $21 million, not even a tenth of what Home Alone did. That failure can’t be blamed on a loaded box office. Backdraft, one of the more popular movies of the year, came out around the same time, but May 1991, when Only the Lonely hit theaters, also had the releases of What About Bob?, Hudson Hawk, and Soapdish, none of which were box office powerhouses. It was meant to be a smaller film, however, not something wild and loud, but quieter and more intimate. That’s not going to bring in families and kids, sadly. The film did okay in critical reviews, but critics like Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman called Candy’s character “a big hearted butterball”, saying that the movie wasn’t realistic because someone who looked like John Candy couldn’t get someone like Ally Sheedy. What an unbelievably cruel thing to say. Imagine a critic dismissing an actor’s performance because of their appearance now. Roger Ebert, in his show Siskel & Ebert, was much kinder, giving Only the Lonely a thumbs up because of Candy’s performance. He confessed to actually liking it more than Home Alone because of the film’s truth and insight, along with how Candy’s character felt like a real, poignant human being we could sympathize with.

Candy was dismissed for his size, but as director Chris Columbus told Bobbie Wynant in an interview at the time, the best comedians, like Candy, Robin Williams, and Charlie Chaplin had a sense of serious humanity about them. He said he chose John because people relate to him. He wasn’t a typical Hollywood leading man, but a middle-America actor who felt like a real person, because he was.

John Candy Showed His Dramatic Range as an Actor

In an interview with Good Morning America, Candy said that those bigger, more extroverted roles weren’t really him, hinting that Danny Muldoon in Only the Lonely is closer to who he really is. Playing against expectations as a bigger man in a rom-com is similar to seeing James Gandolfini at the end of his life playing a quieter, unintimidating man in Enough Said with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a drastic departure from Tony Soprano. It’s also what Chris Farley would have been like as Shrek, because before Mike Myers got the role, Farley had done most of the voice work, giving us a character who was still funny but also more lonely.

None of this is meant to stereotype bigger actors and comedians as guys who must be sad because they carry more weight. John Candy could have been lighter and still pulled off this performance through his facial expressions, body language, and the tone of his voice. It’s the way he’s shy with Ally Sheedy’s Theresa, but also assured in his pursuit of her. She’s the one who’s younger (Sheedy was just 29 in 1991) and deemed more physically attractive by society, but whatever issues Candy’s Danny Muldoon has don’t seem to compare to whatever is holding Sheedy’s Theresa Luna back. Theresa feels like a woman smaller than she is because of how she seems to wilt around people. She’s painfully shy, and her eyes dart everywhere. Theresa is uncomfortable around Danny, not because she doesn’t like him or finds him unattractive, but because she does.

Danny is portrayed as and believes that he’s a pathetic momma’s boy, but Theresa is intimidated by him. She finds him exciting, which only hinders her more. Danny talks and talks because he doesn’t have many other people to talk to, but when he wants to know more about Theresa, she tells him, “You don’t wanna hear about me. It’s boring.” When the date doesn’t go well, she takes all the blame, apologizing for her introversion, but rather than being scared off, Danny is intrigued to meet someone as unusual and stunted as he is.

Her awkwardness makes him more comfortable, rather than making him more over-the-top bumbling and goofy, as a way to show how nervous he is. Candy’s best work in Only the Lonely is done with Maureen O’Hara, who came out of retirement just to make the movie and work with Candy. Her character, Rose Muldoon, is a mean, cold, demanding woman, but Candy’s Danny lives with her out of guilt. She needs him, and he needs her, but a moment at the end shows just what Candy was capable of.

In one of the last scenes, Danny and Theresa break up, with Rose moving to Florida. Danny is supposed to go with her, but he can’t, telling his mother that he needs to stay and fight to get Theresa back. Rose takes it badly, saying the worst things to her son in an attempt to hurt him, before quickly apologizing and reconciling. Without getting loud, wildly gesticulating, or going off on an extended monologue, Candy goes from confident, to angry, to sad, to happy all in less than three minutes. Only the Lonely digs in and gives us a raw and pained character. Comedy and drama can be on the same spectrum when both can be used to show how you respond to your insecurities. The self-deprecating humor is still there, but as a way to mask his pain. The gentle kindness is there as well, in a face that can drop and tear you apart, or give a small smile, like in the last freeze-frame of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and make you feel his joy. Three years after Only the Lonely, John Candy would be gone.

John Candy’s Films Are Looked At Differently Since His Passing

When John Candy died on March 4, 1994, while filming Wagon’s East, it was a shock to Hollywood. Yes, Candy was larger in stature and had gained even more weight in the last few years of his life, but his death wasn’t like other similar comedians. Before him, when John Belushi died at the age of 33 in 1982, it was a heartbreaking loss, but his demise from a drug overdose happened because of his own demons. Then there’s Chris Farley, another bigger comedian who was often compared to Belushi and Candy. When he died in late 1997, less than four years after John Candy, at the age of 33, just like Belushi, it too was unbelievably tragic, but following in his fellow SNL hero’s footsteps, it was drugs that took him as well.

John Candy seemed like the sweetest guy in Hollywood. Heck, it’s right there in his name. You wanted to be his friend, and it’s impossible to find a bad story about him. For example, in 2022, Conan O’Brien was on The Howard Stern Show and spoke about Candy visiting Harvard when Conan was a student there. The famous actor let the then-unknown O’Brien follow him around all day and gave the aspiring actor advice. John Candy didn’t come across as a man filled with demons, even if he did have his struggles. Losing him has caused fans to look at him with a new appreciation.

Only the Lonely gets lost in Candy’s other work, and in being Chris Columbus’ impossible followup to Home Alone. Audiences weren’t ready for it in 1991 because it’s not what we were expecting. We wanted a more funny, physical, wild, over-the-top Chris Columbus movie, and a more silly, bumbling John Candy, but instead, we got a layered, often sad character who didn’t make us laugh constantly. Audiences didn’t want to see a movie where the guy from Spaceballs fell in love with the woman from The Breakfast Club. If you were older and loved Maureen O’Hara as a serious actress, making her big return in a small comedy felt off. Three decades ago, we simply weren’t ready for a serious, more dramatic John Candy. We’d become too accustomed to his past comedic roles and weren’t ready to let go of them. Sadly, we had to let go of John Candy entirely. Now, we can look back and see the major trajectory his career was about to go on. Candy could have gone to become a serious leading man. Still, we’re left with more than the possibilities. We’re left with Only the Lonely.

Only the Lonely is available to watch on Starz in the U.S.

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