The best news about "Only the Lonely" is that it brought Maureen O'Hara out of retirement and that she is reunited with Anthony Quinn for a few scenes.
Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between in this otherwise very uneven blend of comedy and pathos that casts John Candy as a romantic lead and Ally Sheedy as the woman he pursues.
They are both shy and in love, but Candy's character, a put-upon Chicago cop, can't quite untie the apron strings that keep him under the thumb of his irascible, bigoted and sometimes surprisingly nasty widowed mother (O'Hara). So when he meets and falls for Sheedy, an assistant to her mortician father, they find their road to romance more than a little bumpy.
Writer-director Chris Columbus, who directed "Home Alone," has written a script that introduces a variety of potentially interesting characters played by an excellent cast, from Quinn's next-door neighbor, to a pair of aging bachelors (Bert Remsen, Milo O'Shea), to Candy's foul-mouthed partner (James Belushi) - then gives them very little to do.
Further, he too often mistakes tacky silliness for lovable eccentricity, as with his running gag about Sheedy painting the faces of the deceased so that they look like celebrities, ranging from Clark Gable to Jimmy Durante.
He also throws in occasional scenes that seem to have little or nothing to do with the proceedings, from some very funny dark fantasies, with Candy fearing O'Hara will be victimized if he's not around to protect her, to a tasteless moment when Candy and Belushi lower a dead body out of a window with a firehose.
Still, the charm of the players consistently comes through. Candy is surprisingly good in the lead, and O'Hara, who has no easy task trying to make make her character of an irritating bigot as lovable as possible, manages quite well. Sheedy also evokes a great deal of sympathy in a role that may remind her fans of "The Breakfast Club." And there is a funny, brief cameo by Macaulay Culkin, the "Home Alone" kid, as Candy's clumsy nephew.
"Only the Lonely" is rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, vulgarity, locker room nudity and implied sex.