John Candy is one of those actors where the failed movies are just as interesting as the ones that were successful with critics, audiences, or both. 1991’s Delirious is very firmly in the former category. It bombed with critics and didn’t do much better in theaters, grossing a little over $5 million on a budget of around $18 million. It was another interesting project on Candy’s part, joining other oddballs in his prolific filmography like Only the Lonely and Who’s Harry Crumb? Like those movies, Delirious features an excellent performance by Candy in a decidedly imperfect film.
Yet of all the obscured-by-time vehicles for Candy, Delirious is perhaps the most forgotten. That’s too bad, because at the very least, there’s something incredibly compelling about the story of Jack Gable, a writer for a soap opera called Beyond Out Dreams (Candy). Jack sustains a serious blow to the head, waking up to discover that he is now in the world of Beyond Our Dreams, which is centered mostly around the Hedisons, a scheming, fabulously wealthy family. As he quickly acclimates himself to his peculiar situation, Jack also realizes that he has the ability to shape the reality of the fictional town Ashford Falls by rewriting the story, which is frequently by Jack’s frustrated desires and other people associated with the show trying to undo Jack’s character beats and plot developments.
There’s a bit more that happens in Delirious, which itself sort of functions like a soap opera. Jack himself is in love with Laura Clayborne, one of the stars of the show, and soon finds himself also pursuing Laura’s character Rachel when he becomes part of her world. Mariel Hemingway as Louise is Jack’s real love interest, with both her character (being shoehorned into Beyond Our Dreams by the shows arrogant, dumbass producers) and real-life counterpart further adding complications to Jack’s chaotic life.
And that’s sort of the problem with Delirious, which I should be clear in saying is one of my favorite obscure comedies. It’s relentlessly charming, even as the movie struggles and ultimately fails to juggle its many characters and plot threads against a high concept screenplay that just doesn’t have the space to make all of these things connect. It’s not nearly as bad as some critics would have had you believe in 1991. In fact, it’s not a bad movie at all. Rather it’s a misfire that has far more going for it than not.
John Candy is obviously the biggest part of that, and his charm and ability to work with seemingly anything you’d put in his hands (he also appeared in Oliver Stone’s JFK around this time, which is about as different a movie from Delirious as it gets) is what grounds Delirious as much as it can be. The setup is simple, and watching Gable try to make sense of the madness he’s partially causing is fun on its own terms and supports the movie at points where it just seems to be spinning its many narrative wheels. Delirious tries to be too many different things at once, it could be argued, but through performances, particularly Candy’s, the movie maintains a focus it might not have had otherwise.
To be sure, there’s a lot about the script for Delirious that I love. The soap opera characters and situations in particular are clever subversions of the genre, and anyone watching this movie on some level at least understands how soaps work. The movie takes your understanding and runs with it to some surprising and often surreal places. The movie operates on soap opera logic, but also works with dream logic, and it’s easy to see why Gable is more often than not way in over his head.
Delirious has good dialog, as well. While we don’t get quite as much time with them as perhaps the movie needed, the scenes between John Candy and Mariel Hemingway are delightful and give the movie rare moments of genuine sweetness. It’s also the best chemistry in the movie, even though neither of Gable’s relationships with the two characters Hemingway plays goes as far as we want it to. There are times when I rewatched Delirious recently that I found myself wishing these two had just done a straight romantic comedy somewhere along the way. Hemingway’s filmography is ridiculously uneven, but she’s always been someone who does better than the material they often have to work with. The scenes in which Hemingway’s soap opera character transforms into another evil member of the Hedison family proves she could chew scenery with the best. Even with the tremendously funny, memorable Raymond Burr standing beside her (in his final feature film appearance).
So, as I keep saying, there’s a lot to like about Delirious. But it’s also a very frustrating watch at times. It has characters that are funny and worth following to the end. Even if the movie lumbers particularly hard in its final act, with Jack waking up to take control of his life in a myriad of ways, Delirious has enough potential to at least get you invested in these characters. The premise remains fascinating, with the notion of the writer being trapped in a world of their own creation that they can also control being something that you could really take to some interesting places. More often than not, it goes to those places. This is especially true in scenes where Raymond Burr as the Hedison family patriarch interacts with his family, playing the ridiculous tropes of a soap opera completely straight because those are the normal details of their lives. At the same time, the actors and the script uses the benefits of a feature film to give these silly people something that feels more rounded in how they behave and react to what’s going on around them. I sometimes watch this and wish it could be longer just so we could spend a little more time with this idiots.
This cast could have very easily gone with the movie in any direction it wanted to go in. This is especially true of Candy, who could have done a lot with a film that focused on one particular aspect of this story. Covering the soap opera and Jack Gable’s personal life, while having ample room for plot and humor for both of those things, leaves us with a remarkable, flawed result.
I love the flawed results of an ambitious comedy that doesn’t quite stick the landing. Sometimes, it’s more interesting than an obscene failure or a thorough masterpiece, and it adds in its own weird way an added strength to the scenes and other elements that work brilliantly. Movies like Delirious can be frustrating in spots, but I wish more people would watch them because I deeply suspect that one, more people would like this very good early 90s comedy, and two, that it’s more exciting to talk about art that doesn’t completely cater to our expectations or hopes.
A movie that’s close to greatness has more conversational potential and cause for study than any other type of movie or degree of quality, and Delirious is a perfect example of that. And if you don’t want to think about it any deeper than the surface, then what’s here is still a well-executed comedy with a good ensemble and a peerless leading man.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.