John Sweet: I Like Me Overview

In the beginning of Colin Hanks’ candy and deeply transferring documentary John Sweet: I Like Me, Invoice Murray jokingly tells the off-screen director that he hopes he’ll be capable to discover somebody to say one thing actually dangerous about him. Sweet was so beloved by his friends and household that, for Murray and lots of of his longtime mates, his purity grew to become virtually an in-joke.

The Canadian comedian celebrity died in his sleep, all of the sudden, on the age of 43, and Hanks frames his funeral as an anchor level. Flashing again in time repeatedly and utilizing a mixture of conventional speaking head interviews, archival footage, discuss present appearances, and infrequently seen outtakes, I Like Me is an try at casting Sweet within the one function he by no means obtained to play throughout his lifetime: himself.

John Sweet is Fantastically Human In This Tapestry-Like Documentary

If subject-driven documentaries like these are hagiographic by design, I Like Me avoids the lure with out indulging in Murray’s ironic directive. As a substitute, Sweet is made human by his humanness, flawed in the best way most individuals are flawed, distinctive within the methods most individuals are usually not. Sweet is portrayed as a loving and attentive father to his youngsters Chris and Jennifer, a faithful artist to a craft he passionately protected, and as a genuinely variety soul whose coronary heart was too embattled by the warfare of Hollywood’s bleakest expectations of celeb.

“He was a grand man,” Dan Aykroyd says of his finest good friend in a shocking eulogy given at Sweet’s funeral, and Hanks leans into that suggestion. Giant in stature and in affect, Sweet’s dimension was each his legacy and his Achilles heel. He was the son of a person whose coronary heart failed on the devastatingly younger age of 35 when John was merely 5, and the bodily hazard of hereditary genetics is matched by a persistent plague of hysteria at a time when remedy was nonetheless very a lot taboo. “His thoughts was chubby,” suggests Chris.

Much more devastatingly, Sweet’s spouse, Rosemary, relays that her husband’s early efforts to shed weight have been met with resistance by his illustration in Hollywood. The business wished him the best way he was, and, like Chris Farley, Sweet discovered himself often the butt of low-level buffoonery that got here on the expense of his long-term psychological well being.

However I Like Me can also be a stunning celebratory tapestry of the artist, whose legendary appearances in Planes, Trains & Cars, Uncle Buck, Dwelling Alone, Splash, and years on SCTV have been standouts in a sea of standouts. Sweet got here up in the identical Toronto comedy scene as Aykroyd, Eugene Levy, Steve Martin, Martin Quick, Andrea Martin, and Gilda Radnor. A staple of the Second Metropolis scene within the North, Sweet grew a fame as a blisteringly humorous sketch comic whose groundedness was distinctly unusual for comics.

Sweet long-established himself initially as an actor, a penchant for verisimilitude that’s significantly evident in Splash and within the sober speech he offers in Planes, Trains & Cars that provides the documentary its title. The previous movie cemented Sweet as a certifiable star, however the latter’s second, through which Sweet’s character Del responds to a vicious takedown by the hands of Steve Martin’s Neal by saying merely, actually, that “I like me,” was an inadvertently metatheatrical second.

Sweet’s repeated appearances on discuss exhibits the place he’s sneered at for being chubby, at the same time as he’s being requested to remain that manner, reveals a person who successfully put up armor.

Most successfully, Shane Reid and Darrin Roberts edit the movie in such a manner that means Sweet’s outsized affect. Transient although his profession was, Sweet’s output was immense. By the superb array of speaking heads Hanks assembles to share their relationship to Sweet, we’re left with the distinct impression that there simply wasn’t anybody else like John. A grand man certainly, in a grand documentary to go well with him.