No Nutritional Value: Weekend at Bernie's
Because Netflix threatened to remove it from my Watch It Now queue today, I watched Weekend at Bernie's last night.
Why, other than the fact it's expiring on my queue, would I watch this? Well, curiosity for one thing--Weekend at Bernie's seems to be a movie that lots of people reference but few have actually seen. Also, 1980s screwball comedies are just...they're a genre unto themselves, you know? They're frequently not laugh-out-loud funny, and although the better ones (Coming to America, Better Off Dead) have some memorable lines, it's really all about the absurdity of the set up in a way that modern comedies...aren't. Modern comedies want you to laugh at a sight gag or a punchline. 1980s comedies expect you to go along for the ride and get your amusement out of going, "Why? Why would anybody react to this situation like this???"
And that's what I got out of Weekend at Bernie's. Instead of immediately calling the police upon discovering a corpse, the two dudes decide to fake like the guy's alive and hope they'll get away with it long enough to figure something else out to do with it when it stops being a passable prop. Because it's a 1980s screwball comedy, the straight man drops the call-the-police plan every time the girl of his dreams walks into the room. What follows is an hour of antics with a corpse, many of which are less funny than the fact that the murderer is in fits because he thinks he keeps failing to kill the dead guy. Who behaves this way!?
Another thing: some of these comedies wait an awful long time to deliver on the premise that seems to be their sole source of amusement. "Antics with a dead guy" would seem to be the whole point of the movie, but Bernie's still alive 40 minutes into a 100-minute movie. That kind of build up is nowhere in comedies today, possibly for the better, seeing as 40 minutes of Andrew McCarthy's "acting" outside of the screwball setup is worthless.
Weekend at Bernie's is ultimately fluff--nothing you need to see to get the aforementioned references but nothing that it harms you to see either. Unless 80s fashions hurt you--there was a shot of men in business suits where the pants were shorts, gro-oss--it's harmless.
Why, other than the fact it's expiring on my queue, would I watch this? Well, curiosity for one thing--Weekend at Bernie's seems to be a movie that lots of people reference but few have actually seen. Also, 1980s screwball comedies are just...they're a genre unto themselves, you know? They're frequently not laugh-out-loud funny, and although the better ones (Coming to America, Better Off Dead) have some memorable lines, it's really all about the absurdity of the set up in a way that modern comedies...aren't. Modern comedies want you to laugh at a sight gag or a punchline. 1980s comedies expect you to go along for the ride and get your amusement out of going, "Why? Why would anybody react to this situation like this???"
And that's what I got out of Weekend at Bernie's. Instead of immediately calling the police upon discovering a corpse, the two dudes decide to fake like the guy's alive and hope they'll get away with it long enough to figure something else out to do with it when it stops being a passable prop. Because it's a 1980s screwball comedy, the straight man drops the call-the-police plan every time the girl of his dreams walks into the room. What follows is an hour of antics with a corpse, many of which are less funny than the fact that the murderer is in fits because he thinks he keeps failing to kill the dead guy. Who behaves this way!?
Another thing: some of these comedies wait an awful long time to deliver on the premise that seems to be their sole source of amusement. "Antics with a dead guy" would seem to be the whole point of the movie, but Bernie's still alive 40 minutes into a 100-minute movie. That kind of build up is nowhere in comedies today, possibly for the better, seeing as 40 minutes of Andrew McCarthy's "acting" outside of the screwball setup is worthless.
Weekend at Bernie's is ultimately fluff--nothing you need to see to get the aforementioned references but nothing that it harms you to see either. Unless 80s fashions hurt you--there was a shot of men in business suits where the pants were shorts, gro-oss--it's harmless.