Year:  1985
Rating: 7.0

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The teenage movie hit its high water mark in the 1980's. They usually but certainly not always fell into two sub-genres - the broken-hearted or love from a distance romance films that seemed to always star the adorable Molly Ringwald or the Virginity films in which the male protagonist is desperately trying to lose his - sometimes successfully; often not. There were a few more serious teenage films as well - sort of in the teenage angst category - Stand By Me and Coppola's Rumble Fish and the Outsiders come to mind. There were also the odd-ball films like Ferris Bueller, Risky Business and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I guess they must still be making teenage films but I can't say I ever see them because they generally are about teenagers being stuck somewhere with a mad killer getting them one by one in as gruesome a way as the director can imagine. Those started in seriousness in the 1990's and have not stopped.


And though Better Off Dead had many of the elements that a lot of the broken-hearted teenage films had - the popular blonde girlfriend ditches him, the nerdy wise-cracking friend, the school bully, the embarrassing moments in high school, the out of touch silly parents, the comical attempts at suicide, the unnoticed girl next door, the main character's redemption, the . . . err - let me back up a bit - the comical attempts at suicide? Yes, with an original tagline of "Sometimes . . . you're Better Off Dead" the film with its mocking absurdist irreverent tone manages to avoid falling neatly into any category. The director and writer Savage Steve Holland had apparently tried killing himself after a break-up as a teenager and years later used that as the inspiration for this film.


Not that it's really the centerpiece of the film - he only tries it a few times in no meaningful way - and like so much of this film making light of suicide would not be cool today. As is true of the two Asian brothers, one of who can only speak like Howard Cosell, the overweight creepy near sex offender cheered on by his mother, the accidental pulling down the dress of a woman in the lunch cafeteria and so on. The 1980's were a lot more non-PC and especially many of the more raucous teenage grotty a smattering of nudity get laid films.


This film just lives in an absurd nonsensical world in which the main character can get nothing right - every thing he does gets screwed up from various car accidents to trying to hit on the basket ball's team's groupie to accidentally serving a woman paint thinner to which she lights a cigarette have no real life consequences. He just seems to sail through it all unconcerned and un-punished - and though a dweeb on so many levels he is still sort of the cool dweeb - and the film is able to pull this off because the main character is played by a very young John Cusack. Cusack starred in a few of these teenage films - the most famous being Say Anything but he always has an intelligent wry characterization going on. Ironically, the producers did not want Cusack for the role as he wasn't well known at the time, but the director fought for him and it is hard to imagine any other young actor at the time who could have brought this off.


In this one as Lane Meyer he is obsessed with his status driven girlfriend who has every intention of dumping Lane because he is not popular enough and has a crappy car. He takes it hard. Especially when everyone from a teacher (a wonderful Vincent Schiavelli) to the postman ask him if it is ok that they date his ex. She ends up in the arms of the top skier and an all around asshole. He thinks he can win her back by beating said asshole in a ski race down a suicidal ski run. In the background is the cute French exchange student that we all know is the girl for him. Mainly because she has a cute accent and has curly hair.


The final fifteen minutes of the film gives it to the stereotype Broken Hearted Guy film ending but until then it is full of very funny bits that often slip by unnoticed - the pig fetus in the jar that his friend carries around with him, the baby food that the basket ball players are eating, the awful goopy meals his mother (Kim Darby) keeps making, one of which crawls off his plate, his younger brother who has a roomful of hot women, the pictures of his girlfriend on every piece of wall space not to mention as coat hangers, that moment when you first meet a girl and you worry you have a bugger on your nose, the psychotic newspaper boy who breaks all their windows and wants his $2, the father (David Ogden Stiers) who thinks he has outsmarted the news boy, the classroom wildly enthusiastic about geometry. There are some very funny moments in here that had me cracking up and though in these PC times and at my age I almost feel weird watching a teenage love story (which isn't exactly Romeo and Juliet) this was a good one.