Better Off Dead(1985)

1985 was a pivotal year in the teen comedy cycle; it took the teen comedy to whole new levels that ranged from the supernatural (Teen Wolf, The Heavenly Kid, Once Bitten) to commentary about gender relations (Just One of the Guys), and commentary about the high school social structure (The Breakfast Club). And there was Better Off Dead, which almost belongs in a category of its own. Better Off Dead’s basic storyline isn’t anything original, in fact, it is pretty formulaic to the teen comedies of that time; all the tropes are there:

Lane –  The average male protagonists, who lacks confidence and obsesses over a pretty blonde (in this case his ex-girlfriend). He spends the majority of the film either obsessing on how to get Beth back, or attempting suicide and failing every time.

Beth -  Lane’s pretty ex-girlfriend, who (as the genre dictates) is a flakey blonde who left Lane for the more popular Roy Stalin.

Roy Stalin – Beth’s current boyfriend and Lane’s main antagonist. He is captain of the ski team and makes it his goal to humiliate Lane.  He is also a local hero, because he is only person to have ever skied the K-12 from the glacier and lived to tell about it.

Charles - Lane’s oddball sidekick, who constantly laments over the fact that he can’t score real drugs. He has been going to Glendale high school for seven and a half years.

Monique -  The pretty brunette (and French Foreign Exchange Student) that lives across the road from Lane. She is staying with the Smiths, who are completely insane.

Again, there’s absolutely nothing original nor innovative about the characters and storylines; in fact, one of the man criticisms regarding Better Off Dead is it’s conventional storyline. In his Movie and Video Guide, Leonard Maltin writes:

            Frustrating film starts off with funny original gags……then it settles into much too conventional story and goes down the drain.

Maltin is essentially correct (except for the whole “goes down the drain part), Better Off Dead ends on a rather, typical teen comedy note. The unremarkable boy and the pretty girl next door are united at the end, the villain gets his just desserts, and the pretty blonde gets kicked to the curb.

However, what most critics miss about Better Off Dead is that its narrative serves as framework for director Savage Steve Holland to hang  his many jokes and gags on; the story is secondary and takes a back seat to the comedy. Throughout the course of the movie Holland will interrupt that narrative just so he can spring one a nonsensical joke at the audience.

1.      There’s the recurring gag of paper boy Johnny and his constant harassment of Lane to get his TWO DOLLARS. This real has no overall function to the narrative and, in fact, Holland probably could have easily removed all of Johnny’s scenes and basically have the same movie. 

2.      Throughout the course of the film, various males (Lane’s geometry teacher, the mailman, and Barney Rubble) ask Lane if it’s okay if they ask out Beth.

3.      There’s the many disgusting food concoctions thought up by Lane’s well meaning, but air headed mom. The most memorable one is a green, slimy blob that crawls off Lane’s plate that his mom made solely because it has raisins and Lane likes raisins.

4.      The many misadventures of Lane’s younger brother Badger, who often cuts coupons off of cereal boxes for the prizes. During the course of the film, he:

a)      Builds a laser gun

b)      Read’s a guide on how to pick up trashy women and then has a New Year’s party with the women he has picked up.

c)      Builds a spaceship which launches during the film’s end credits.

5.      Lane is constantly challenged to drag race by the Ree brothers, one (the driver) of whom speaks no English and other learned to speak English by watching the Wide World of Sports. They have speakers mounted to the top of their car and the English speaking brother taunts Lane in a Howard Cosell-like voice. 

6.      Then there’s a funny bit, in which Lane is driving in his car and hears the song, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” playing on the radio, not wanting to be reminded of Beth, he turns to another station, which is also a playing a song about breaking up, then he turns to another and gets the same result. Finally, out of frustration, he throws his car stereo out the window.

7.      And then there’s a short, claymation sequence that revolves around an anthropomorphized hamburger lip syncing to the Van Halen classic “Everybody Wants Some.”

This was a common tactic used by comedians in the silent era; make a list of gags and then develop a narrative to build that gags around. In Better Off Dead the gags take a precedent over the story, it really isn’t until the last half hour that the REAL story kicks in: Lane bonds with Monique and with her help finds confidence in himself that he’s able to beat Stalin in a ski race.  This narrative would usually slowly develop throughout the course of the film, but in Better Off Dead it’s condensed into the final act of the movie. Interestingly, Monique and Lane don’t actually meet one another until the film is halfway over and even then their meeting gets interrupted by random comedy bits.

Monique’s screen time in the first half is fairly limited, she will occasionally pop up to remind the audience that she’s there, but she’s almost a nonfactor. The major advantage to this is that it answers the question, “Why is Lane so obsessed with Beth, when a better looking brunette is waiting in the wings?” This tends to be the most irritating aspect of most teen comedies; the main character obsesses over a popular blonde and is oblivious to the fact that much nicer and better looking woman is standing right next to him the entire time. In Better Off Dead, Lane doesn’t notice Monique, because he hasn’t meet her yet. And once he gets to know her, it isn’t long before he is smitten with her.  Surprisingly, despite being condensed, the relationship between Lane and Monique is absolutely believable, this is large due to the wonderful chemistry between John Cusack and Diane Franklin; the interaction between these two actors makes it easy to believe that these characters would fall for one another. 

Furthermore, Holland establishes from the get go that the two are kindred spirits, they both find themselves victims of circumstance:  Lane’s girlfriend has left him to be with his most hated rival and Monique is doing her best to keep her sanity while living with the ultra nerdy Ricky and his deranged mother, Mrs. Smith. In one of the film’s funniest moments, Monique is having Christmas with the Smiths and Ricky’s mom asks, “Do you have Christmas in France? You know….CHRISTMAS! CHRISTMAS!” 

She then grabs Monique’s lips and makes her enunciate the word Christmas. Ricky (after being spurred by his mom) then gives Monique a present, which is a framed picture of him making a rather idiotic face.

Monique is absolutely stunned. Later, she walks outside and bursts into uncontrollable laughter.

The main reason the relationship between Monique and Lane is believable is that is the first person (in fact the only person) in the film that is capable of having a normal conversation with Monique. In the school cafeteria, he confides in her about his mom’s terrible cooking and how anything, including cafeteria food, tastes good in comparison. The other characters really don’t regard her as a person: Roy views her as his next conquest and speaks to her in French, in an attempt to seduce her. Monique responds by shaking up a can of soda, opening  the tab and spraying it all over him.  Mrs. Smith treats Monique like a misbehaved child and often talks down to her, while Ricky doesn’t speak to her at all, but keeps her at arm’s length whenever they are seen together. Later on, when Monique is venting by throwing apples at a speed limit sign, she confides in Lane that she can speak English (up until this point the audience is lead to believe she can only speak French) and that the reason she pretended she couldn’t was, “If you lived with a family like that, the less you spoke the happier you would be.”

I disagree with Leonard Maltin’s claim that the movie “goes down the drain” once it reaches its climax; if the audience didn’t care about the plight of Lane then maybe he would have a point, but the greatest strength of Better Off Dead is that it builds sympathy for Lane right from the beginning. There are probably a lot of men out there who can relate to Lane’s frustration of seeing the woman of his dreams date a guy who is a complete douchebag. It is the ultimate kick to the groin. I certainly can relate, as I witnessed it first hand, granted she wasn’t the girl of my dreams, but she was extremely cute and her boyfriend…well the less I say about him the better. Not only is Roy Stalin a douchebag, but he is the ULIMATE TEEN DOUCHEBAG. Roy’s antagonism towards Lane is never really justified, most teen comedies at least try to give the bully a motivation for tormenting the hero, but Roy is an asshole just for the hell of it. He calls Lane, “Oscar Meyer” and often makes jokes at Lane’s expense, like suggesting that Lane try out for the girl’s water ballet team. The most frustrating aspect is that not only is Roy an asshole, but he’s practically better than Lane at everything, hell the guy is a local hero as he is the only person to successfully have skied the K12. Charles, Lane’s best friend, even says that Lane is a great skier, but Roy is incredible.
And if that wasn’t enough, the film stacks even more miseries on poor Lane:

1) He is harassed almost nonstop by paperboy Johnny, who often pops up in the most unlikely of places, like the roof of Lane’s car.
2) He is constantly been challenged to race by the Ree brothers.
3) His dad keeps lecturing him on how needs to shape up his act. At one point he sets Lane up on date with his law firm partner’s daughter, who has a huge set of braces on her face and doesn’t even go out with him, but rather calculates what the total cost of their date would have been and has Lane pay her half the bill. His dad also gets him a job at Char Burger, which is owned by the guy whose truck Lane has run into twice.
4) At one point, Lane tries to ask out cheerleader Chris Cremmens, who dates the basketball team. “Not just certain members of the team, but the entire team. “ He notices she wears roller skates, so he borrows a pair of skates from some random teenager, puts them on and hopes it will get her intention. She calls him a jerk and when he tries to clarify he trips on his skates, grabs hold of Chris’ cheerleader uniform and accidentally rips it off, leaving her exposed in her bra and panties. The basketball team gangs up on Lane and gives him a sound beating.

5) He attempts to ski the K12 on multiple occasions, but loses his balance each time and tumbles down a long, painful distance.

With all this nonstop misery, it’s no wonder Lane is suicidal for the first hour of the film. He attempts suicide four times in film; twice talking himself out of it and the other two times fate intervenes. In one case, Charles sees Lane about to jump off a bridge, reassures him that everything will be alright, and pats Lane on the back, which sends him flying into the back of a garbage truck. The other time Lane is about to set himself ablaze but is interrupted by a surprise dinner for the Smiths and Monique.

However, the frustration keeps building and finally Lane takes it out on Roy, challenging him to a ski race atop of the K12.

The race atop of K12 and the montage building up to it are the weakest parts of Better Off Dead. Throughout the course of the film Lane has been completely inept when it comes to skiing the K12, but through the magic of a movie montage, Lane goes from falling on his ass to being a world class skier, to the point that he’s capable of doing all sorts of hard tricks, like skiing through Monique’s legs and skiing on one ski.  It’s more likely a case of director Holland shoehorning one of his hobbies into the film and trying to show the audience all the neat stuff that can be done while skiing, regardless as to whether or not it fits the tone of the film.
It’s also makes Monique comes off as being a bit too perfect for her own good; earlier in the film she helps Lane repair his broken down Cammaro and here she coaches him on how to ski the K12.  She does a run to show Lane how it’s done and he makes an attempt and once again falls on his ass. It comes completely out of left field, because nowhere in the earlier scenes is it established that Monique is a skier. Thankfully, this only eats up only about ten minutes of the film’s actually screen time, and it manages to regain its footing once the race is over and Lane has a duel with Ricky(with ski poles) for the fair hand of Monique.

The other enjoyable aspect of Better Off Dead is how it often takes conventional scenes from teen movies and turns them on their head.

1.      Beth’s break up with Lane.

We never see Beth break up with Lane, but rather it is handled in a voiceover as a shot of Lane driving in his car is shown on screen. Beth is pretty direct with her reasons for breaking up with Lane, “I think it would be in my best interest if I dated someone more popular, better looking, drives a nicer car.”

2.      The classroom scene.
Practically every teen comedy has a scene in which the characters sit around in the classroom and are absolutely bored by the lesson they are learning. In Better Off Dead, the class is completely enthralled by the geometry lesson they are being given by Mr. Kerber to the point that when the bell rings, they all depressed that is has come to an end. Mr. Kerber reassures them by saying, “No, no! I’ll see you all again tomorrow. Just remember to memorizes pages 39 to 110 for tomorrow’s lesson.” The class lets out a shout of joy and goes on their merry ways. Another funny bit is when Mr. Kerber asks for volunteers to show the results of their homework on the chalkboard; everyone (except Lane) raises their hands at once, shouting, “EW! PICK ME!”  When he picks a person, the rest of the class lets out a groan of disappointment.

3.      The school dance.
The teen genre dictates that there must be a scene at a school dance and Better Off Dead is no exception. The dance scene is a pivotal point, because it’s when Monique literally runs into Lane. This scene, however, is a lot of fun, mainly for all the comedy bits that are scatted throughout:

a)      Lane and Charles are sitting at a table looking dejected when Roy walks up to them and says, “You got my vote for cutest couple. You better shave her before you kiss her goodnight.” Charles breaks out into a fit of hysterical laughter to the point that his eyes begin to water. Later, Roy and Beth are dancing, when Charles interrupts them still laughing at Roy’s comment.

b)      Ricky shows up to the dance with Monique in tow. He gets on the floor and starts swinging Monique around in circles. A crowd gathers around the two, Ricky puts Monique down and, through the crowd’s urging, attempts to slide on the dance floor. He takes off his glasses, loosens his tie, and dives….knocking himself out in the process. Monique escapes during the confusion, while the crowd proceeds to dance over Ricky’s unconscious corpse.

c)      Monique sees Lane exiting the building, runs after him, and pushes him down to get his attention. She apologizes and proceeds to shake his hand over and over. At this point, she stills feigning that she can’t speak English. Ricky, having gained conscious, runs after Monique holding a balloon his right hand. He is shocked to see Lane and Monique together, let’s go of the balloon, and makes an ill fated attempt to grab it before it flies away.

4.      Lane’s challenge to Roy.

Roy and Monique are having lunch together, when Roy walks up and proceeds to harass Lane and Monique. He tries to seduce Monique by speaking French to her, but she dashes his hopes by shaking up a can of soda, opening the tab, and spraying it all over Roy, who then proceeds to insult Monique. This makes Lane furious and, in his anger, he challenges Roy to a ski race atop of the K12. As soon as the arrangements have been made, it is announced over the PA system that, “Lane Myer is racing Roy Stalin atop the K12 this Saturday.” All of Lane’s long oppressed classmates gather around him and pat him on the back.

5.      The K12 race.

The race is pretty conventional, with the exception that Johnny shows up and keeps chanting over and over, “I want my two dollars.” This freaks out Roy, who hits Johnny with his ski poll, which in turn sends Johnny barreling over a cliff. Has Johnny finally met his demise? Nope. A few seconds later the camera cuts to Johnny still alive and, even in his dazed state, demanding two dollars.

6.      Monique and Lane’s union.
Lane has one more challenge before he can claim victory and that is to save Monique for the clutches of the Smiths. After the race, the Smiths come to claim Monique; Lane comes running after them, grabs Monique and challenges Ricky to a duel….with ski poles. Lane loses his ski pole in the duel and Ricky goes charging in for the kill, but Lane steps out of the way, grabs Ricky’s pole and throws him into his mother. He then carries Monique off over his shoulder and has finally defeated his demons (well except Johnny).

It’s a real shame that director Savage Steve Holland wasn’t given more opportunities to direct movies (he made One Crazy Summer a year later and then went into television), because he has a wonderful sense of cinema about him. His direction is often very creative, which is amazing considering that this was his first film. Here’s just a few examples of Holland’s inventive direction:

1.      In a flashback, Lane and Charles are at a park playing catch with a football. Lane catches the football and notices Beth and her friend sitting at a picnic table. He waves at them and they start to laugh. At first we think they are laughing at his flirting, but then the camera tilts down to reveal Lane standing over a picnicking family and his feet are firmly implanted in their sandwiches. Lane then goes over to talk to Beth and notices her scratching her nose; he interprets it that she is sending a signal that something is on his nose, so he scratches his. She then interprets his scratching as him being too embarrassed to tell her that something is on her nose, so she scratches her nose again. This goes back on forth, until the scene ends with both of them blowing their noses with napkins, putting the conversation at a complete stand still.

2.      The dance scene begins with a close up of the singer (Elizabeth Daily), then the camera pulls back to reveal students dancing on the floor, and it pans over to the right to reveal Lane and Charles sitting at a table, both looking complete dejected. In a single shot, Holland perfectly establishes Lane’s relationship to the rest of the student body.

3.      When Mr. Kerber tells his students he would like to see the results of their homework, we are shown a shot of a kid printing up his homework on a printer, while another student has an entire binder filled with the assignment. The camera cuts to Lane, who pulls out a folded sheet of notebook paper from his back pocket, he unfolds it, finds a piece of gum stuck to it, and two underlined words written on the paper, “DO HOMEWORK!”

It is creative moments like this that separate Better Off Dead from all the other teen comedies that dominated the eighties. Those films, while funny, often tended to be a bit more realistic in their depiction of teen life, but Better Off Dead takes high school's most painful moments and exaggerates them to the Nth degree. It takes the pain and transforms it into pure comedy.

Cast: John Cusack (Lane Mye), David Ogden Stiers (Al Myer), Diane Franklin (Monique), Curtis Armstrong (Charles), Daniel Schneider (Ricky), Kim Darby (Jenna Myer), Laura Waterbury (Mrs. Smith), Amanda Wyss (Beth), Aaron Dozier (Roy Stalin), Elizabeth Daily (Herself), Vincent Schiavelli (Mr. Kerber), Damien Slade (Johnny), Scooter Stevens (Badger), Taylor Negron (Mailman).

Writer/Director: Savage Steven Holland.

Running Time: 98 minutes.