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| One of the festive posters for Ted Kotcheff's Weekend at Bernie's |
Weekend at Bernie's is a beloved dark comedy by writer Robert Klane (Weekend at Bernie's II (1993)) and director Ted Kotcheff (First Blood (1982)).
Two aspiring, young friends at a New York insurance company get lucky with a business find and get invited to their boss Bernie's luxurious vacation house. But when they find Bernie dead upon arrival, they decide to keep it a secret.
Bernie's allegedly started a trend of 'dead-person-comedies' and became a popular hit that attained near-cult popularity through endless TV reruns and video and DVD (and in 2014 Bluray) releases in the years following its theatrical release. A trivia note that is almost too obscure to mention is that it is revealed in one Friends' (1994-04) episode to be Rachel's (Jennifer Aniston) favorite movie.
The film starts out great, and the two protagonists played by Andrew McCarthy (Less Than Zero (1987)) and Jonathan Silverman (Death Becomes Her (1992)) have good chemistry and energy. - In particular the scene of SPOILER Silverman's date, who comes home to his parents, (his father gets played by Kotcheff), is a riot.
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| One of the other upbeat posters for Ted Kotcheff's Weekend at Bernie's |
The details:
The first scenes of the two friends' handling of dead Bernie are also quite funny, but then after a while it is clear that this will be the joke for the remaining more or less an hour of the film; their carrying, driving, boating and dragging poor, dead Bernie around everywhere. It becomes too silly and our two heroes become too idiotic at some point, losing our investment in them. Needless to say, the plot also becomes unlikely beyond any measure, and Bernie's develops from the farcical into a screwball-like crazy-comedy. Somewhere along the way, it begins to come off as a one-trick-pony, which squeezes every possible morbid variation out of its gimmick.
Terry Kiser (Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)) plays Bernie, which must have been difficult. Unfortunately, it is hard not to focus on the jerks and other ways that his 'corpse' moves, which a real one naturally wouldn't. (His skin color also stays almost the same throughout.)
All these objections aside, Bernie's is a good enough time, if not entirely deserving of any classic status.
Watch the trailer here
Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 30.2 mil. $ (US only)
= Box office success
[Bernie's spun a 1993 sequel, and was reportedly financially successful, although its reputation would make one think it bigger at its time than the case actually was. I have not been able to find any international gross figures, (beside that it made 400k £ in the UK and that 600k paid admission to see it in Germany.) This Variety article reports that Kane and Kotcheff sued Fox and MGM about a year ago, claiming that they have lost "at least hundreds of millions of dollars" due to the companies' neglect to pay them profits for Bernie's. I have found no conclusion to this truly wild accusation yet.]
What do you think of Weekend at Bernie's?
Other 'dead-person-comedies' possibly inspired by it, or which may have inspired it?
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