Review of Better Off Dead... (1985) by Jemma P — 22 Mar 2015

This is simply a mess. Quite honestly, the worst movie I think I've ever seen; or at least that I recall seeing. If anything positive can be said about it, perhaps it is that it is memorable: that is something.

Alas, it is memorable for all of the wrong reasons. Incredibly unfocused, this film seems extremely unsure of its own genre and tone, and if that was meant to be some sophisticated artistic choice, then something clearly went very wrong, because that was not the impression I was left with whatsoever.

The jokes are very immature and stale, the plot infinitely predictable, and the characters either unlikable, annoying, or very uninteresting -- or occasionally a truly mind-numbing combination of these undesirable qualities.

At no point did the story persuade me to be interested, and after around the first fifteen minutes I found myself having to check the length: how much longer would I be forced to sit through this insipid nonsense? Besides the incredibly forced acting, uninventive plot, and hopelessly confused tone and atmosphere, I found myself developing an intense dislike for the main protagonist, and extreme irritation with the majority of major side characters and antagonists.

Having heard that the film was meant to be some artistic surreal black comedy, I went into the film expecting something along the lines of Donnie Darko: and as the film progressed, I found myself wishing that the characters (bland and unfunny as they were) had suffered similar fates to those in Donnie Darko.

A desperately unnecessary and bizarre animated sequence involving living hamburgers was really the point when I had to consign this to among the worst films I've ever seen; not only was it utterly pointless, with no purpose or payoff, but it only further confounded me and made me wish it was over.

There was no message (which is not unforgivable), there were no interesting or likable characters (nor memorable ones, apart from a few so irritating that they left a permanent, negative impression), nor a meaningful or enthralling story, nor inventive or unusual ideas (apart from one or two that were so woefully out of place that they would have been more effective if they had been cut and made into mildly interesting short films).

It's just a horrible, horrible movie. The best that can be said is that its camerawork isn't terrible, the acting isn't as bad as it could have been, and at its heart, there might have been potential for a decent film, or perhaps several films: but alas, this tried far to hard to meld wholly irreconcilable ideas and tones, and that's really what this movie boils down to -- a very forced attempt to blend a lot of ideas that simply had no justified reason to be together in the first place.