Better Off Dead… (1985, Savage Steve Holland)
This movie surprised me, and not necessarily in a good way. As many of you know, I kind of missed out on all the “classic” movies made in the 80s. Then, I was too young. Now, I’m not interested enough to make an effort to catch up.
Better Off Dead… is about a young man called Lane Meyer (John Cusack). After his girlfriend (with whom he’s more than a little bit obsessed) breaks up with him, he gets depressed, and thinks up various outrageous schemes for killing himself. His girlfriend Beth is now going out with the (very popular) captain of the ski team, and Lane decides that the only way to win Beth back and regain his honour is to beat Roy on the slopes.
So, Lane has to practice skiing, endure his mother’s terrible cooking, and try to dodge a homicidal and very relentless paper boy. Meanwhile, there’s a pretty French exchange student staying with Lane’s awful neighbours, and he befriends her. All in a day’s work, eh?
I enjoyed parts of this movie: the character moments are all good, and there are a bunch of really hilarious scenes and bits of dialogue. However, I wasn’t prepared for all the crazy non-sequiturs and bizarre fantasies that we see throughout, so I could never get into the movie fully.
Cusack is good at this sort of thing (I recently saw Say Anything… and enjoyed it), but I never could understand why he would be considered a failure or a geek of any kind. He’s cute, charming, smart and funny, so why all the girl trouble? The rest of the cast is passable too, but there are too many stereotypes for my liking.
Maybe if I was born ten years earlier, I’d get what the hell this was all about. I was never a great lover of 80s teen movies, and this did nothing to convince me I should be.
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