Uncle Buck Trivia
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50 free Uncle Buck trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free Uncle Buck trivia questions with answers. Uncle Buck put John Candy in a Chicago suburb with three kids, a drunk clown and a very large pancake, and topped the box office for a month in 1989. This quiz covers the film from every angle: the Russell children and the young Macaulay Culkin, Tia's boyfriend Bug, Chanice and her auto shop, the shoot inside a vacant high school, the mixed reviews and the two short-lived TV remakes. It also reaches into the wider Candy and Hughes partnership: Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Great Outdoors and Home Alone. Easy questions ask who played Buck and why the parents leave. The hard ones want the filming start date, the name of the Malayalam remake, and the fictional Wisconsin town from The Great Outdoors. It suits a movie night or a round for anyone who grew up on late-80s comedies. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, its cast and its makers, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which tool does Buck boast of carrying in his car when he warns off Tia's boyfriend in Uncle Buck?
A hatchet
A hatchet: Buck says he carries it not to kill, just to maim, then goes and fetches it from the car, which is enough to scare the boy.
Q 02In Uncle Buck, where does Buck take the whole family rather than let Tia go out with her boyfriend?
A bowling alley
A bowling alley: it is where Buck usually hangs out with his bachelor friends, so he drags everyone along to keep Tia away from her date.
Q 03Why do the Russell parents have to leave their children with Buck?
Cindy's father has a heart attack
Cindy's father has a heart attack, and only after every friend and neighbour proves unavailable does she reluctantly agree to let her brother-in-law mind the children.
Q 04In Uncle Buck, how does Buck dry the family's laundry after losing his fight with the washing machine?
In the microwave
In the microwave: he washes the clothes in the kitchen sink first, and the flirtatious woman next door drops in on him mid-chore and tries to get him dancing.
Q 05Which child actor plays Miles, the nephew who grills Buck with rapid-fire questions in Uncle Buck?
Macaulay Culkin
Macaulay Culkin impressed Hughes so much, above all guarding the mail slot against intruders, that Hughes had him in mind for Home Alone the next year.
Q 06Which actress, later the student singer Rowena in Mr. Holland's Opus, plays the hostile niece Tia in Uncle Buck?
Jean Louisa Kelly
Jean Louisa Kelly was making her film debut, and her Tia fights dirty, telling her mother on the phone that Buck drinks and leaves the little ones home alone.
Q 07Which child actress, later Jonah's friend Jessica in Sleepless in Seattle, plays six-year-old Maizy in Uncle Buck?
Gaby Hoffmann
Gaby Hoffmann was growing up in New York's Chelsea Hotel at the time; at ten she told a reporter the family was being evicted and that it was time to leave anyway.
Q 08What does Buck hit Tia's boyfriend with as a parting shot in Uncle Buck?
A golf ball
A golf ball: having made the boy apologise, Buck lets him go, then tees up and hits him from a distance with a perfectly aimed drive.
Q 09Which actress, Kevin Costner's wife in Field of Dreams the same year, plays Buck's girlfriend Chanice in Uncle Buck?
Amy Madigan
Amy Madigan's Chanice wants Buck to settle down and take a steady job, and it is she who minds the little ones while he goes looking for Tia.
Q 10What is the name of Tia's self-centred boyfriend in Uncle Buck?
Bug
Bug sneers at Buck's smoking wreck of a car, 'Ever hear of a tune-up?', and Buck answers, 'Ever hear of a ritual killing?'
Q 11Who plays Marcy, the flirtatious neighbour who gets Buck dancing in Uncle Buck?
Laurie Metcalf
Laurie Metcalf's Marcy invites herself in and coaxes Buck into a living-room dance while he is doing the laundry, just as his girlfriend arrives at the door.
Q 12How does Buck make his living at the start of Uncle Buck?
Betting on horse racing
Betting on horse racing is his only income, and on the day of the race he hoped would keep him for a year, he gives it up to go looking for Tia.
Q 13What is the name of the drunken entertainer who turns up late for Miles's birthday party in Uncle Buck?
Pooter-the-Clown
Q 21Which Hollywood legend returned after twenty years away from films to play John Candy's mother in Only the Lonely?
Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara had retired, but Chris Columbus wrote the domineering mother Rose for her, and reading his script changed her mind.
Q 22Which critic gave Uncle Buck one and a half stars, complaining that John Hughes had struck too many wrong notes?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert usually admired Hughes as the master of the right note, but here he found the teenager too angry and an uncomfortable undercurrent in the material.
Q 23Which studio released Uncle Buck?
Universal
Hughes made it under a multi-picture agreement with the studio.
Pooter-the-Clown, played by Mike Starr, is still the worse for drink when he arrives, so Buck won't let him near the children and sends him packing.
Q 14In Uncle Buck, what job is held by the stern woman Buck tells off at Maizy's school?
Assistant principal
Assistant principal is her title; when she complains that Maizy is a dreamer who won't take school seriously, Buck says he wouldn't want to know a six-year-old who did.
Q 15Anna Chlumsky, briefly seen as one of Maizy's classmates in Uncle Buck, starred as Vada in which 1991 film?
My Girl
My Girl made her a child star two years later, yet she gave up acting for college and a job in publishing before returning to it and playing Amy in Veep.
Q 16John Hughes, who made his name with teen films, built Uncle Buck's sets inside what kind of vacant building?
A high school
A high school: three gyms at the closed New Trier West in Northfield became sound stages for the Russell house, and Home Alone's interiors were built there a year later.
Q 17In Home Alone, written by John Hughes, John Candy cameos as the leader of a travelling band that plays what?
Polka
Polka: his Gus Polinski, the self-styled Polka King of the Midwest, gives Kevin's stranded mother a lift home in the band's rented van, and Candy shot the whole cameo in a single day.
Q 18In Cool Runnings, John Candy plays a former Olympian who coaches which country's first Olympic bobsled team?
Jamaica
Jamaica: the film is loosely based on the team's debut at the 1988 Calgary Games, and the coach was written as a serious part until Candy asked to play him.
Q 19Uncle Buck spent four weeks at number one after knocking which Steve Martin comedy off the top spot?
Parenthood
Parenthood had topped the US box office for two weekends when Buck arrived in August 1989, so Candy unseated his own Planes, Trains and Automobiles co-star.
Q 20In Mel Brooks's Spaceballs, John Candy plays the sidekick Barf, who is half man and half what?
Dog
Dog: Candy wagged Barf's tail himself by pressing a hidden button, while the animatronic ears were worked off-camera by remote control.
Q 24Who played Buck in the 1990 CBS sitcom version of Uncle Buck?
Kevin Meaney
Kevin Meaney's version caused a media fuss with the very first line of its first episode, when Buck's little niece yelled 'You suck!', and it lasted one season.
Q 25What happens to the children's parents in the 1990 sitcom version of Uncle Buck?
They are killed in a car accident
They are killed in a car accident, which turns the film's one week of babysitting into full-time guardianship for Buck; CBS dropped the show after a single season.
Q 26Who played Buck in ABC's 2016 Uncle Buck series?
Mike Epps
Mike Epps's Buck moves in as the family's stand-in nanny in this reboot, which ABC ran for just four weeks in the summer of 2016 before cancelling it.
Q 27Which Big Momma's House star played Buck's sister-in-law in ABC's short-lived 2016 Uncle Buck series?
Nia Long
Nia Long played Alexis, the wife of Buck's brother, in a reboot that ran to only eight episodes: ABC aired them in four weeks and cancelled it the day after the last.
Q 28Which tool does Buck take into the teenagers' party where he goes looking for Tia in Uncle Buck?
A drill
A drill: Buck has it with him in the upstairs bedroom where he finds Tia's boyfriend with another girl, and the boy's apology turns sincere only once the drill comes out again.
Q 29Which Canadian sketch comedy show made John Candy famous before Hollywood?
SCTV
SCTV grew out of the Second City stage troupe, whose Canadian branch Candy joined in 1972; once NBC picked it up, characters like his unscrupulous TV personality Johnny LaRue reached American viewers.
Q 30Which documentary maker directed John Candy in the satire Canadian Bacon, released after the actor's death?
Michael Moore
Michael Moore cast Candy as a Niagara Falls sheriff who leads an 'invasion' of Canada after a struggling president picks the neighbours as a handy new enemy.