Review #682: 'Weekend at Bernie's' (1989)

Time has the knack of breathing fresh new life into a former piece of crap. Nostalgia sets in with the fashions and the music of its era, and familiar faces re-appear after we have seen their careers gradually collapse. Unfortunately for Ted Kotcheff's Weekend at Bernie's, it is the same cringe-inducing, one-joke farce it was 24 years ago. There was a real chance for some dark comedy here, given that the set up isn't a bad idea if you have the correct writers behind it. However, Norman Mailer did not write Weekend at Bernie's, Robert Klane did, and he was responsible for such classics as National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985), Folks! (1992), and, most unforgivably, Weekend at Bernie's II (1993).

Larry (Andrew McCarthy) and Richard (Jonathan Silverman) are two young, eager lower-level employees at a New York insurance firm. When Richard discovers that an employee has stolen 2 million dollars from the company, he and Larry think they're on their way to a promotion and take the findings to their boss, Bernie (Terry Kiser). As a reward, Bernie invites them to stay at his island beach-house, but secretly, Bernie is behind the theft and has hired a mob hitman to take them both out. However, Bernie himself is assassinated for sleeping with the mob boss' wife, and with party-seeking friends quickly turning up at the beach-house, Larry and Richard must maintain the illusion that Bernie is still alive and well if they want to party.

It seems strange that their has never been (to my mind) a decent comedy involving a dead body. Perhaps the presence of a cadaver is too macabre a subject to raise any laughs, or, as with Weekend at Bernie's, there's not much you can do with it apart from move its limbs and head in an attempt to squeeze out some laughs. And that pretty much sums up this film, raising the question of how moronic can these people be to not realise Bernie is dead? Perhaps it's because, inexplicably, rigor mortis fails to set in at any point and his bowels do not drop. This may even be forgiven if we had anyone to root for, but, as hard as McCarthy and Silverman try, their characters are nothing more than incompetent goofballs chasing that ever-so-80's dream of climbing the corporate ladder. 100 minutes of pure pain.


Directed by: Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kiser
Country: USA

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie