Only the Lonely

In this rehash of Marty from the John Hughes factory, John Candy plays a 38-year-old cop who lives for his mom (Maureen O’Hara) instead of himself. When he falls for a timid makeup artist who works over the corpses in her father’s funeral parlor (Ally Sheedy), he must choose between being his own man or a mama’s boy.

As a love story, Only the Lonely falls flat; there’s no chemistry between kindly Candy and wallflower Sheedy. And the script has O’Hara slinging ethnic slurs and, at one point, trying vainly to make a big joke out of Sheedy’s small breast size. Even a walk-on by Home Alone‘s Macaulay Culkin can’t save the movie; when it’s time to choose this weekend’s video rental, Only the Lonely is for only the desperate. D