Review of Better Off Dead... (1985) by Rob M — 26 Jul 2010

Better Off Dead makes me miss the 1980's. There's a goofy innocence to movies like this one that's missing from today's cinema. In this case, Lane (John Cusack, in one of his first lead roles) plays a lovelorn teenager who's despondent over being dumped by his girlfriend, Beth. He contemplates various farcical suicide plots, but then decides the best way to win her back is to beat her new boyfriend in a ski race.

So far, so stupid, right? Improbably, writer/director Savage Steve Holland imbues the movie with a smart sense of the absurd (Lane's math class is one of the funniest, most inspired school scenes in any movie I've ever watched) and Cusack portrays Lane not as a creepy, obsessive stalker, but as a believably angsty teen who's lost his one chance at true love. The collision between sincerity and absurdity gives the movie a distinctive, one-of-a-kind feel that sets it apart from other teen movies of the time. John Hughes was plowing a similar, complementary furrow, and while Better Off Dead isn't as good as, say, The Breakfast Club or SIxteen Candles, it gives the viewer an appealingly skewed variation on the Hughes formula.