How is it I became a teenager in the middle of the 80’s, yet I have never seen so many movies of the era? These are movies that were fairly popular at the time, at least as rentals. One such example is 1989’s Weekend at Bernie’s. Unfortunately, I recently decided to rectify this.
All I remember of the movie at the time of its original release is the harshness of the reviews. The critics largely despised this picture. As for myself, I have enjoyed many such similarly hated comedies from that era when I finally got around to seeing them. I definitely like John Candy’s oeuvre more than critics of the time.
So I was hoping to find something of merit here. I’m an easy laugh, so I’m inclined to give comedies more leniency than other genres. Superficially, this appeared to be a black comedy, and I’m a fan of movies like Arsenic and Old Lace and The Trouble With Harry, so I thought this might be in a similar vein.
And the premise of this feature has potential. Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman are aspiring employees of an insurance company where they uncover proof of massive fraud from within the organization. They present the evidence to the head of the company, Bernie (Terry Kiser).
It is no surprise Bernie is the one actually perpetuating the fraud. He invites the two to his beach house for the weekend, which they believe is a reward for their investigative work. In reality, Bernie is arranging to have mobsters knock off the two in an apparent murder-suicide. The leader of the gang, however, plans to have Bernie eliminated instead, as he has been making time with his girl (Catherine Parks).
A movie has a serious problem when everything I found of merit in it occurred before it gets to the main plot. Silverman and McCarthy have just enough charisma and rapport that there is enjoyment in simply watching them interact with each other. There’s a neat scene with them on a rooftop during a heat wave so severe that their shoes and everything they brought with them gets covered with molten tar.
There’s also Silverman’s debilitating crush on summer intern Catherine Mary Stewart. He is so crippled with fear that his first words to her are an expected “My aunt is very sick.” I like that moment because it is honest. I was also amused by the restaurant he takes on their first date: Hymie’s Hunan.
Unfortunately, Stewart is given very little to do here except look cute and pull the occasional mug. That disappointed me, because she delivers solid performances when given more to work with, as in Night of the Comet.
Terry Kiser is interesting as Bernie, at least he is before his demise at the end of act one. He is a caricature of yuppies and their conspicuous consumerism. We’ll see he has a golf cart modeled on a Ferrari.
One joke that landed for me was this head of an insurance company has a speedboat named “Premiums”. There’s also his office, which is ridiculously ugly, even for the time. It looks like it has brass panels on the ceiling. Is this guy secretly Trump?
Silverman and McCarthy are in awe of Bernie and all he has. McCarthy, astounded by Bernie’s car: “Do you know how much it costs to park a car in Manhattan for a month?” Silverman: “To be fair, his car is much larger than your apartment.”
One of the last moments I enjoyed in the film is when these two leap on the ferry to get the island where Bernie’s house is located. They barely manage to succeed, only to discover the ferry was actually docking and not departing.
Unfortunately, Bernie dies shortly after this and what should have been start of the movie proper marks the end of the laughs. My problem is there isn’t a reason for Silverman and McCarthy to stick around once they find Bernie’s corpse.
You see, the assassin made the death appear to be an overdose, though I don’t think the coroner would believe anybody would shoot-up in their ass cheek. Since our two protagonists find the needle and drugs, they can’t possibly believe somebody would come to the conclusion they were responsible for his death.
Anybody else would call the police or just leave. Some people might even bury the body or drag it into the ocean. But not these two. No, they go on to perpetuate the bizarre ruse that their deceased employer is still alive.
They don’t need to put in much of an effort initially, as oblivious partygoers have one-sided conversations with the corpse that’s seated casually on a sofa. I’m not sure if this speaks worse of people with so little attention to anything outside themselves, or of Bernie, as he had so little personality in life that his appearance in death is unchanged.
As the weekend grinds on, Silverman and McCarthy drag the corpse all around the island for increasingly opaque reasons. By the end of the film, they are driving his boat around the harbor, causing all sorts of accidents. Eventually, Bernie’s tethered body falls overboard and bounces in the water behind the boat. Many, many people who should be sterilized believe he is intentionally water skiing. A joke isn’t funny if the characters are too stupid to be believed.
But if there is one moment I hated more than any other, it is when Parks, as the mobster’s squeeze, appears at the house. Believing Bernie stood her up, she proceeds to go to the bedroom to confront him. Our “heroes” wait in stunned silence until she comes back downstairs. Parks definitely has a post-coital glow. We are mercifully left to imagine how she committed necrophilia, even if unknowingly.
Compounding this stupidity is one of the mobster’s henchmen has followed her to the house. Is communication so poor in their organization that he doesn’t know one of his peers killed Bernie earlier that day? If this guy is aware of that fact, why follow Parks to a house where he isn’t going to possibly find her cheating on his boss?
In closing, I want to single out an image that has lingered in my mind from finally seeing Weekend at Bernies. Near the end, the guy who killed Bernie finds himself trying to walk around that corpse. Pushing away Bernie’s upright leg, it slams back down into the assassin’s crotch. I can’t think of a more appropriate moment that captures the inanity of this endeavor than a man kicking himself in the crotch with a dead man’s foot.
Dir: Robert Klane
Starring Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kiser
Watched on MGM blu-ray