Better Off Dead...

One of my all-time favorite comedies

I love this movie and John cusck in this.

Two dollars........ I want my two dollars!!

One of my favorite 90's movies that I still quote from. How can you not like this weird movie? It's a classic that I have watched too many times.

John Cusack plays a high school space cadet who apathetically considers suicide after his girlfriend dumps him for the captain of a local ski team. Stood up by his rebound date at a school dance, he bumps into a cute French exchange student (Diane Franklin) who dusts him off, shines a little light into his life and motivates him to seek revenge.

Dour material for a comedy, maybe, but Better Off Dead’s wacky interludes, effective running gags and dark sense of humor really make it work. Cusack is a weird kid with obsessive tendencies - his shrine to the first girlfriend is downright obscene - but he balances that with a grounded personality and a willingness to embrace life’s absurdities. Half the movie’s humor is derived from that last point. He’ll indulge the Japanese twins who challenge him to stoplight drag races (while channeling Howard Cosell), accept his Dad’s invitation to take a friend’s geeky daughter out for the night, repeatedly throw himself down a mountain... whatever it takes to break the monotony. It’s the type of role a teenaged Cusack was born to play, and he squeezes it for all the juice it’s got.

Writer / director Savage Steve Holland broke into the industry with this film, loosely based on his own experiences as a troubled teen, and it remains an outlier forty years later. Frequently blending fantasy with reality, it can be difficult to recognize whether the action is playing in truth or just in Cusack’s mind. Holland mixes stop motion and traditional animation into several scenes, and occasionally those dashes of impulsive surrealism can be too much, but such is the risk of mixing media. It’s still shockingly funny and well-written, with a sweet romantic subplot, dozens of excellent supporting players and belly laughs to spare. I wasn’t prepared for how much I’d still enjoy this.

This one of the lesser known comedies of the '80's but it's one of my favorite. The humor is clever and the movie itself is downright funny. Lane's awkward attempts at suicide, his awkward friends, and his progres throughout the movie. And there are little gems throughout like the drag racing nemesis and the demon paper boy who just wants his two dollars. This is one that you can watch over and over again.

John Cusack plays a kind of poor man's Ferris Bueller in this silly comedy about a teenager battling a rival skier a girlfriend who dumps him some drag racing Asian teens that talk like Howard Cosell a killer ski run and so on. The movie has many unbelievable elements that really are funny. Cusack plays it cool here and although a lot of crazy things are happening he carries an almost disaffected attitude toward it all. Another familiar face is Curtis Armstrong who plays Cusack's sidekick. You'll remember him from his role as "Booger" in "Revenge of the Nerds". Overall this is a very good '80 teen humor movie.

I haven't seen a movie as silly and nonsensical as "Better Off Dead" for a long time. Instead of a reasonably structured story, this is more of a series of sketches. Nothing is taken seriously, not even the subject of suicide. But despite all the silliness, or probably because of it, the movie is actually a lot of fun. The humor may take some getting used to, but it works pretty well, at least in some places. There are certainly a few genuine laughs to be had watching "Better Off Dead."

Better than I expected. Good humour. Not tacky.