Uncle Buck is a 1989 comedy-drama starring John Candy, Amy Madigan, Jean Louisa Kelly and Gaby Hoffmann, and co-stars Macaulay Culkin. Jay Underwood, Laurie Metcalf, William Windom, Mike Starr and Anna Chlumsky have cameo roles. The movie was written and directed by John Hughes and received a PG rating from the MPAA.

Cindy and Bob Russell are raising a family in an upper middle-class Chicago suburb. Their children are Miles (Culkin), Maizy (Hoffman) and Tia (Kelly). They had recently moved to Chicago from Indianapolis. The move caused Tia to become very upset.

On any other Monday afternoon, the three kids are shown arriving home. Late that same night, around 2:00 in the morning, Cindy and Bob receive a phone call from Indianapolis: Cindy's father has just suffered a heart attack. Cindy and Bob make plans to leave immediately. However the children have school, so they cannot be taken along.

Bob suggests they ask his brother Buck (Candy) to watch the kids, which Cindy rejects because she doesn't feel comfortable with him. Buck drinks, smokes and is a general slob. Cindy also does not approve of his girlfriend (Madigan). However it turns out that no one else is available to help them, so they have no choice but to turn to Buck. Buck agrees to come out to their home and watch them. Buck doesn't even remember the names of the two younger children. After some confusion over what house Bob's family lives in, he finally gets there. The couple soon leave to go to her father.

Buck immediately hits it off with both Miles and Maizy. However Tia does not like Buck. When taking her to school, Buck meets Tia's boyfriend, Bug. Buck can see right through him; Bug's only interest in Tia is for sex.

Over the next several days, Buck has to deal with a number of interesting situations involving his girlfriend, Miles, Maizy, and Tia. These situations include taking the kids to Buck's favorite bowling alley, Buck talking to a callous vice principal over her concerns about Maizy, cooking gigantic pancakes, and dealing with a drunk clown. In these situations Buck is shown to be a man with a heart of gold who adores his brother's children.

Towards the end of the movie, Tia sneaks away with Bug to a party. Thinking that Bug is taking advantage of her in a bedroom at the party, Buck drills a hole through the door knob of his room, walking in on Bug with another girl. Realizing that Tia has already left using her own, now better judgement, Buck decides to tie him up and throws him in his old car only to let Bug out later to apologize to Tia and hit him with a golf ball as he flees.

John Hughes claims that the scene wherein Macaulay Culkin speaks with Amy Madigan through the mail slot in the front door was what gave him the idea for Home Alone. The film was shot almost entirely on the campus of New Trier West High School in Northfield, Illinois. The house set was constructed in the gymnasium. The piano music at the beginning of the film is by Hugh Harris, it is taken from his 1989 song "Rhythm of Life"; the full song is played at the end of the film.

Towards the end of the film when Buck gets a golf club and ball from the trunk of the car, places it on the grass to fire a shot at the fleeing Bug, the "club swing" shot was filmed on the grassy school bus turn around on the NTW school campus, but Bug fleeing shot was filmed in the parking lot of a small grocery store in Glencoe, IL, where other segments of the movie were filmed but never used in the final version. These two perspectives of the same scene were more than 3 miles apart. For the scene in which Miles rapidly interrogates Buck about the fine details of his life, John Candy had the prompter set up on his back so that Macaulay Culkin could maintain the scene's breakneck pace.

During its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, Uncle Buck grossed $8.7 million in 1,804 theaters, ranking #1 at the box office. It stayed the #1 film for a total of 4 weeks in a row.

The film grossed a total of $66.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $12.5 million in other territories for a worldwide gross of $79.2 million. In 1989 it was the 18th top grossing film in the United States and Canada, and the 20th top grossing film worldwide.

As of November 2007, Uncle Buck is Macaulay Culkin's highest grossing film outside of the Home Alone series.

In 1990, a television show named Uncle Buck was broadcast on CBS. It starred Kevin Meaney as Buck, a slob who drinks and smokes. When his brother and sister-and-law die in an automobile accident, Buck is named as the guardian of Tia, Miles, and Maizy. The show was not well received by either critics or the viewing public, and it was quickly cancelled.