Better Off Dead... (1985)'s comments

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Dr. McNinja

I want my two dollars!

11 years 3 months ago

NourNasreldin

This film is the best answer to the question "What were the 80s like?"

5 years 9 months ago

goellnerd

Unwatchably bad. Don't waste your time

1 year ago

If Better Off Dead... wasn't one of the inspirations for Hot Tub Time Machine, I'll eat my hat (well, A hat, I don't think I actually own a hat). There are too many commonalities, from John Cusack skiing on down. But what a strange little comedy. I think the way to understand it is to say it's a story being told (sans narration) after the fact, by the two POV characters (Cusack and the French exchange student Monique), in which we get to visualize every distorted memory, joke and exaggeration as fact. This is How I Met Your Mother, but with more visual gags, I suppose. So while the basic plot is your standard high school, coming of age, romcom, much of the verbal humor is dated and even irksome, and the 80s soundtrack mostly dreadful, there's so much whimsy, so many bizarre ideas - the mother's bad cooking, the obsessive paperboy, the drag race sportscasting, etc. - that I ended up thinking it was pretty neat. Could do without the stop-motion burger sequences, mind. A forgotten gem I think we're better able to enjoy today than back then.

4 years 10 months ago

TalkingElvish

So great!

12 years 8 months ago