Producers: Colin Hanks, Sean Stuart, Glen Zipper, Ryan Reynolds, George Dewey, Johnny Pariseau and Shane Reid   Director: Colin Hanks   Cast: Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Macaulay Culkin, Don Lake, Chris Columbus, Conan O’Brien, Mel Brooks, Rose Candy, Chris Candy, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan, Steve Aker, Pat Kelly, Terry Enright, Tom Davidson, Rita Davidson, Ennio Gregoris and Catherine McCartney    Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios

Grade: B

The words of the old standard, “Seldom is heard a discouraging word,” might be applied to Colin Hanks’s loving tribute to John Candy, whose untimely death at only forty-three in 1994 robbed the world of one of its finest comic actors.  It begins with interview footage of Bill Murray trying to think of anything negative to say about his friend; eventually he muses that Candy once over-milked a scene, annoying the director.  Barely a venial sin.

Murray goes on to rhapsodize about Candy, and the other interviewees listed above—colleagues, family (his wife and two children), childhood friends—follow suit.  The result subtitled with a line that Candy famously spoke as Del Griffith after being berated by Steve Martin’s Neal Page in “Planes, Trains & Automobiles,” is a cinematic love letter to the man—one that, after watching the succession of tributes the younger Hanks has accumulated, seems to be well deserved.

That’s not to say that Candy sailed through life without emotional turbulence.  The death of his father at only thirty-five haunted him.  He was beset by anxiety about his own talent.  He was perhaps too eager to say “yes” to friends who asked hm to accept small guest roles in films that he undertook with little preparation, usually falling back on versions of characters he’d developed in his early days in sketch comedy.  (Not that they weren’t still funny, or endearing, or both.)

But an eagerness to please is hardly a major flaw, and artists in general, and comedians in particular, seem prone to self-doubt and premonitions of mortality.  Candy overcame his fears to deliver work that, at its best, has stood the test of time, remaining as fresh, funny and, in some cases, poignant as when it was new. It’s true that by the nineties he was appearing in films that were unworthy of him, including the last, “Wagons East,” which was completed with the use of doubles and computer imaging after he died of a heart attack during the shoot.

But by then he’d built a lasting legacy both on and off the screen.  That’s clear not only from the raft of clips Hanks has assembled from Candy’s days with Second City and SCTV through his collaborations with writer-director John Hughes, another figure who died young and for whom Candy became a sort of muse, but from the recollections of those who remember him as thoughtful and committed.  One hesitates to pick favorites, but certainly his brilliant SCTV work, and among movies “Planes, Trains & Automobiles,” stand out.  And among the most memorable interviews are those with O’Brien, who recalls how considerate Candy was of a star-struck fan; Culkin who, appearing far more animated than is often the case nowadays, talks of his “Uncle Buck” co-star’s lack of condescension in dealing with child actors and his sensitivity toward them, off the screen as well as on it; and Don Lake, whose comments about his last days on the “Wagons East” shoot are moving.

On the technical side, “I Like Me” isn’t much more than adequate; the archival stills and clips from films and TV aren’t ideally crisp, and the contemporary interview footage, as shot by cinematographer Justin Kane, is just okay.  But editors Shane Reid and Darrin Roberts string it all together well enough, and Tyler Strickland contributes a pleasant score.

 Some might argue that Hanks’s portrait of John Candy borders on hagiography.  But it’s hard to see how a different approach would have been possible in dealing with a man who appears to have been a genuinely nice person.  The film is a warmhearted tribute to a man whose own warmth seems to have won over everyone who knew or worked with him.