Review of Better Off Dead... (1985) by Danny R — 03 Sep 2009

One of the few teen comedies to stand shoulder to shoulder with John Hughes' back-catalogue, Better Off Dead is a weird hybrid of the teen genre, pulling in strange fantasy elements that were (unfortunately) reined in/diluted for the director's later movies.

This is one of the truly original teen comedies in a decade awash with dull carbon-copies - using darker, more adult themes than many of it's peers to paint a broader, rounder picture of the times than one would first imagine.

Lane's suicide attempts (I've always thought to be an homage to Harold and Maude), although played for laughs, strike a serious chord for such a "zany" comedy, and the drug references of the uber-cool Charles De Mar kinda outstrip the weed in Johnson's shorts (although I am in NOOO way rating Better Off Dead above The Breakfast Club) make this movie the logical step between the candy floss teen movie and their grown up counter-parts (St.

Elmo's Fire, Bright Lights Big City etc.) Cusack shines (as always) bringing that little bit extra to the movie that, along with an incredibly quotable script, intelligent stereotype pastiches amongst an incredibly strong supporting character roster (I defy you to find a speaking character in the movie that you wouldn't want to know more about- even Taylor Negron's two lines as the postman are cool) and a cute love spine make this a real treat - if it suffers from anything, it's perhaps a little time-lag (you'll KNOW you're in 1985), but despite this, I'd recommend this over "big-boy smut" any day of the week.

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