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Starring John Candy. There are a number of varied directorial techniques for directors to film a certain scene to best capture the action. Some directors like to use Polaroid or blue or rose filters on the camera to add a different hue to the light. Director Chris Columbus, however, prefers to use a different type of filter: the reality filter. The nature of this filter is that all the gritty and graphic elements of real life are transformed into warmer and fuzzier things for the supposed viewing pleasure of the audience; scenes shot on location have cute homeless people, morally upstanding crack addicts, and no Streetwise vendors. Everybody's happy... except me.This Disney-ifying of reality truly bothers me, as I both appreciate and enjoy on-screen grittiness. Films are almost always benefitted by the addition of grit and reality; Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas is probably the greatest example of this in recent memory. In Leaving Las Vegas, Figgis allowed star Nicolas Cage to experiment with a wide range of emotions, actions, and feelings, spanning from the dry heaves to heated and violent arguments with security guards in casinos. These elements, which are anything but warm and fuzzy, were what added the heart and depth to Leaving Las Vegas. Without showing the graphic nature of Cage's alcoholism on-screen, Figgis' would have been left with a rather pointless, backboneless film, like, say, Only the Lonely. John Candy stars in Only the Lonely as Danny Boyle, a Chicago police officer, who, in his late 30's, still lives with his mother, Maureen O'Hara. Candy has a chance meeting with the shy daughter of a mortician, Ally Sheedy, and the two fall in love, much to the chagrin of O'Hara, whose character feels strongly about anyone not Irish or Catholic. With films like Adventures in Babysitting, Mrs. Doubtfure, and Nine Months on his resume, Columbus, who also wrote the script to Only the Lonely, has never been accused of being a film director with an attitude or presence like Brian DePalma or Martin Scorsese, and doesn't deviate from this notion here. Only the Lonely is kept sweet, harmless, and agreeable, which, in certain circumstances would be a compliment, but with perpetual nice-guy John Candy in the lead and no unlikable characters in the film, there times when I would overdose on the sugary and syrupy nature of this movie. I enjoyed the quirky nature of the courtship between Candy and Sheedy, and wanted them to be together, but was annoyed time and time again by the log-headedness of Candy's character and the couple's illogical actions. By the standards of Walt Disney films made in the early 1960's, Only the Lonely is a good family film or romantic comedy. However, things have changed slightly since then and by today's standards, I found Only the Lonely to be entirely too sweet and mushy for its own good. The lengths to which Columbus has taken to directing a film of real merit are astounding.
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