July 27, 2017

True story: my mom took me to see this flick on the last day of 5th grade and I immediately declared it the best film ever made. So the following week I made my dad, who REALLY wanted to see Batman instead, take me to see it a second time. My dad and I had the same sense of humor and liked all of the same comedies but about halfway through this flick he leaned over to me and said “this guy is dead and they are just gonna drag him around?” Me: YUP!! Dad: And this is funny how?” George Tebo was not feelin‘ the Bern, folks. So I checked out said flick again this week...and you know...my old man had a point. Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman play two loser schmos who discover a 2 million dollar accounting error at the non-specific financial institution they work for. They bring the error to the attention of their boss, the filthy rich, mustachioed lothario Bernie Lomax, who invites the duo to his island beach house for the weekend as a reward for their solid accounting work. But you see...Bernie is the one who done did the stealing! Guy is totally mobbed up. Bernie asks his mobster friends to whack McCarthy and Silverman but then the head mobster’s girlfriend tickles Bernie’s junk under the table so they decided to kill him instead. There’s also a big setup involving Silverman’s crush on Actress Who Looks Like Elisabeth Shue But Who Is Not Elisabeth Shue that involves him incessantly telling her huge shitburger lies and then trying to hook up with her on his parent’s couch. It’s pretty much the creepiest thing ever...until the dead body at least. Anyway...the dudes get to the island and find Bernie dead but instead of calling the police they decided to just roll with it. McCarthy is all like “dude promised us a sick weekend and no one seems to notice he’s dead anyway, bro.” It’s true...no one notices! I think this movie is really some sort of hidden commentary on how people don’t really pay attention to each other. Silverman is dead set (ha!) against this plan but then Not Elisabeth Shue shows up and he figures he use the opportunity to creep on her some more. So that’s pretty much it: these two yahoo’s drag Bernie’s dead ass body around all weekend. They make him cocktails....sunbathe with him...play Monopoly with him. And he stays in pretty pristine shape throughout despite normal decompositional type things...not to mention being poisoned, shot, strangled, dropped off of buildings, dragged down flights of stairs, dragged behind a boat at top speeds. Oh yeah...he also has sexual intercourse. The mobster’s girlfriend shows up and balls Bernie’s corpse, causing McCarthy to quip “that guy gets laid more dead than I do alive’...cuz there’s NOTHING funnier than accidental necrophilia, amirite!? Gah! Anyway...the mobsters eventually show up and kill Bernie again and there’s a shootout with Silverman and McCarthy and blah blah blah. The bad guys lose...McCarthy rips a ton of cigarettes, and Silverman and Not Elisabeth Shue end up together even though he’s a pathological liar. Bernie stays dead...at least until 1993’s Weekend at Bernie’s 2. Scene.