Uncle Buck (1989) was not what I was expecting.  Never had I had an interest in watching it over the years, though random friends have occasionally said they enjoyed it.  For whatever reason, it never struck my fancy.  My first negative impressions of it as a kid stuck in my brain.  There were also a number of things about it that I had forgotten, or did not realize having not seen it.  First, I forgot that Macaulay Culkin was in it, playing the young Russell boy Miles.  This predates Home Alone (1990), by the way.  Also, I did not know that Uncle Buck was directed by John Hughes.  While watching it recently, somehow I missed his in the opening credits.  Still, as I watched the first couple of scenes of kids arriving home from school in what is clearly a late winter/early spring suburban setting, there was an air of familiarity.  When I saw the bank of Winnetka in the background of another shot, I knew what I was looking at.  I also lived it.  I mean this quite literally.  I was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago when this was being filmed.  Finally, the way the story played out took me by surprise, and in a good way.  It all made for a pretty satisfying piece of cinema.

It is the Russell kids that are coming home from school at the beginning of Uncle Buck.  The first to arrive is fifteen-year-old, and sulky, Tia (Jean Louisa Kelly).  She greets her younger sister Maizy (Gaby Hoffman) before Miles comes in through the back door.  They are each having trouble adjusting to their new surroundings, the result of a recent move by their family to the Chicago area from Indianapolis.  This seems a step up to me, but I am biased.  What is missing so far is Bob (Garrett M. Brown) and Cindy Russell (Elaine Bromka), the parents.  They each have busy lives, and it is Tia that feels their absence the most.  At dinner, despite Cindy trying to be cheerful, Mia mocks the fact that they are eating takeout Chinese instead of a home cooked meal.  Meanwhile, at the corner of Milwaukee and Halsted (another Chicago reference), our title character (John Candy) is having his own tough time.  He is at a bar with his girlfriend, Chanice Kobolowski (Amy Madigan), trying to convince her that he is serious about their relationship.  For her, the way to do so is to show up at the auto tire repair shop she operates to start his new job working with her.  Buck promises he will be there, saying that the only thing that could stop him is unforeseen circumstances.  Surely, nothing will go wrong, right?  In the middle of the night, Cindy gets a phone call saying that her father in Indianapolis has had a heart attack.  Having no one else to turn to, Bob phones his brother Buck, who readily agrees to come watch the kids.  Cindy is not thrilled by this, and Buck is not completely confident either given the fact that he cannot remember the kids’ names.  He also pulls up to and knocks on the door of the wrong house before Bob comes out to correct him.  Much of this happens with the little ones still asleep, though Tia is annoyed, as usual.  In the morning, with Buck enthusiastically, if clumsily, making an enormous breakfast, she tries to behave as if her uncle did not exist.  This proves impossible when he takes everyone to school.  Tia is the most embarrassed by the massive amount of exhaust fumes that come out from the back of Buck’s car, and the fact that it backfires when it comes to a stop, sounding like a gunshot.  She attempts to tell her uncle that she will get a ride home, but Buck tells her that the rules state that he is to pick her up, getting her to comply by threatening further embarrassment.  This is what I was expecting from the film.  Buck is uncouth, a stereotypical bachelor who never had a family because he valued his freedom as a single guy over commitment.  This is why Chanice does not fully trust him.  And when he does not come to work for her, her doubts appear to be confirmed.  While his relationship is not going well, Buck settles into the day-to-day activities of essentially being a parent.  Granted, he may not understand how to use the washing machine and dryer, resorting to cleaning clothes in the kitchen sink and microwave to accomplish the goal, but he is earnestly trying.  This comes through the most in his interactions with the kids.  He is patient with Maizy and Miles, but most of all with Tia.  She wants to do the kinds of things that teenagers in every movie want to do, namely spend most of her time with her handsy boyfriend Bug (Jay Underwood).  Buck is aware of the boy’s intentions towards his niece, and intimidates him into keeping in line, despite Tia’s resentment.  Her anger spurs her to further complicate the situation with Chanice, telling Buck’s girlfriend that he is cheating on her.  Despite this petty act, Buck goes out to find her when she goes missing, foregoing going to the horse track to make what is supposed to be a sure bet.  At first, he thinks she is with Bug.  Buck finds the kid with another girl, and decides to kidnap the teenager.  He does this as a peace offering to Tia, who had been spurned by Bug for her reticence to sleep with him.  After getting their revenge, Tia apologizes to Chanice for lying, and all on the evening before Bob and Cindy return home.  Everyone is happier for the experience, departing with promises of seeing one another again soon.

As I said, I expected Uncle Buck to be more crass and vulgar than what it turned out to be.  Indeed, there were many moments when this Catholic heart of mine was warmed by the proceedings.  It starts with Tia’s decision to remain chaste.  Who knows what the future holds for her, but for now she is saving it for marriage, thankfully.  More philosophically and theologically, I am impressed with the growth experienced by Buck.  At the beginning of the movie, he does not seem to want to be married and have children.  Instead, he wants to be able to golf and smoke cigars whenever he likes.  Chanice has an interesting response to this declaration.  She says that the lifestyle he describes sounds like a recipe for loneliness.  Of course, she is not thinking of vocations when she utters these words, but she is completely right.  God asks us to choose.  What Buck is describing is a way of living that seems like nothing but choices, but ultimately becomes a prison of loneliness.  I have seen it in myself, and others, where before I started discerning a consecrated life, I would look at my friends and their families and be sad because I did not have something similar.  They had what I wanted.  Yet, I could not obtain it because I was afraid of making a choice.  The wonderful blessing, though, is that God never stops inviting us.  Buck could have continued on living his bachelor life.  God brought him something else, and his life is changed for the better.

I described Uncle Buck as a satisfying film, and I stand by that statement.  There are, though, a few strange moments in there, times when the comedy gets a little too cartoonish.  Otherwise, outside of a few curse words, I would say this is fine for almost any audience.  It gets my recommendation, anyway.