Viking Night: Better Off Dead
By Bruce Hall
February 19, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It’s also directed by someone named Savage Steve Holland, it stars John Cusack at his unfinished best, and it’s even got a neurotic fat kid and a pretty French girl. So why, you ask, do I sound vaguely unhappy? Sure, it's got a big following. It's got a handful of great quotes. It's not very long and it doesn't really ask much of you, intellectually. But on this - maybe the 10th time I've seen the movie - it's just not so funny anymore, and the reason is "all of the above." Cusack is all that still works, although even his reliably deadpan schtick starts looking all too real, all too soon.
Cusack is Lane Meyer, a cocky suburban teen who has no idea what hell his life already is, thanks to the criminally insane level of obsession he has for his girlfriend, Beth (Amanda Wyss). His father (David Ogden Stiers) is a gullible dullard who's convinced all teenagers are on drugs. His little brother Badger (Scooter Stevens) is a proto Bond villain science whiz who never speaks. His best friend Charles (Curtis Armstrong) is a psychotic drug fiend. His mother seems to suffer from some kind of brain injury. And Beth? She dumps Lane for Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier), captain of the ski team, while the opening credits are still rolling.
And in the blink of an eye Lane isn't so cocky anymore, and things that were once background noise suddenly get turned up to 11. His father pesters him to get his derelict Chevy off the lawn. Badger's luck with the ladies couldn't be better. Charles is always around. A pair of Japanese street racers in Monday Night Football jackets stalk him daily. The paperboy starts trying to kill him. Beth doesn't return his calls. The basketball team kicks his ass. Stalin keeps persecuting him.
Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria.
It's enough to convince Lane he'd be better off dead, and after several (supposedly) hilariously unsuccessful attempts to snuff it, he devises a cunning plan to destroy Stalin and win back his flaky, backstabbing girlfriend once and for all. What he doesn’t realize is that the beautiful foreign exchange student living next door (Monique, played by Diane Franklin) has eyes for him, and things might not be as bad as they seem. Also, Lane happens to be a pretty good skier himself; he’s just unable to qualify for the team thanks to Stalin’s cock-blocking. If only there were some way, between all of these people and all of these things - and the Bitchin’ Camaro - there was a way he could redeem himself and find the love he so clearly, obsessive-compulsively believes he deserves.
If only. Like most '80s teen comedies, Better off Dead isn’t the place to go if you want to learn about whether it’s the content of your character or the presence of a kick-ass muscle car in your driveway that makes you a good person. No, this is the kind of movie where you turn off your brain and just let it happen. The problem is that while there are more than a few laughs in Better off Dead, the movie feels like a loosely connected series of bizarre sketches than a coherent story. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - even a stupid story needs to make sense, or you risk your audience feeling cheated. We just never feel a sense of connection between the characters, or any investment in their (very) loosely connected stories.
The main story here - Lane and his attempts to win back his girlfriend - takes up probably less than 30 minutes of screen time. Meanwhile, characters and subplots are introduced that go a long way toward padding the script, but otherwise amount to nothing more than a distraction. The paperboy is funny - anyone over the age of 35 will automatically laugh when they hear you say “I want my two dollars” - but what does he have to do with anything? Lane’s neighbors, and a subplot involving a dancing hamburger are also funny, and do serve to bridge Lane’s character development, but the execution feels clunky and contrived.
Charles is there because we HAVE to have a Wacky Best Friend, but he doesn’t really DO anything, other than deliver a handful of memorable lines. Plus, Curtis Armstrong is a character actor whose persona is so closely identified with Revenge of the Nerds that he kind of takes you out of the movie whenever he’s on screen. What I’m getting at is that Better off Dead is kind of funny, but it’s funny in the same pointless way as watching a video mashup of random people getting punched in the face. And Lane blithely wades through it all with the same look of bemused detachment that got Peter Venkman through Ghostbusters.
Neither film would have worked out the same way without its leading man. The difference is that without Bill Murray, Ghostbusters would have still been a good story, and a different kind of funny. Without John Cusack, Better off Dead would fall apart completely and be exposed for the incoherent pile of half baked punchlines that it is. It’s good for a nostalgic shot in the arm, but you’ll find yourself strangely silent and sad during moments that once had you in stitches. Like any bottle of wine, Better off Dead had a shelf life, and was best enjoyed quickly once opened.
But now that time has passed, and all that’s left is just a stale, depressing glass of vinegar.