Scary Dad
Barely a glimmer of hope for it when it hit the release calendar in 1989 – and here we are, 33-years later celebrating the ‘legacy’ of a cornball comedy about two guy’s carrying a dead corpse around a beach.
Yet that’s exactly why Weekend at Bernie’s has stood the test of time, and why director Ted Kotcheff’ scrappy little laffer became the surprise hit comedy of the year (or one of – next to, well,) – pocketing a sumly 30 million upon release (a nice penny for a film in that day and age). The film knew what it had, knew what it was, and went for it – Abbott & Costello meets the… Corpse style.
Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman are seemingly having a ball here as two well-worked young workers who inadvertently find themselves babysitting their recently deceased boss (Terry Kiser, in a performance that should’ve won him some sort of award) on a beach vacation. There, the hapless dup decide to convince everyone that ‘Bernie’ is in fact is just a little inebriated. It was like cheap mull… not real good for ya, obviously, yet ya kept drawing it in.
Newly released on Blu-ray by Via Vision, and with a very nice-looking, great sounding transfer (much better than my well-worn VHS!), Weekend at Bernie’s is a film that is still great party picture material – grab yourself a slice, a frosty one, and round the boys up.. it’ll hit as good as it did at that Saturday matinee back in the George W.-era.
(As for the sequel, Director Robert Klane seemingly put together his film like Frankenstein put together his monster – and it looked just as ugly, and turned just as many away.)
