Savage Steve Holland hasn't really done much else since Better Off Dead (well, a lot of tv, so like I said) but when you do it so well the first time around, why bother? Better Off Dead is the kind of movie that arrived too early in the "80's Teen Movie" wave to be really effective in 1985, but watch it now and see just how badly movies like Not Another Teen Movie got it.
(future Cap'n needs to interject here and mention this poster. I mean, wow. That is a TERRIBLE poster for a movie this gleefully weird. It looks like someone took the Meatballs poster and decided to marry it with On Golden Pond*. I'm amazed anyone went to see this when Better off Dead was released.)
For example, two brothers who do nothing but drive around racing people. One speaks no english, and the other one learned how speak it from watching Howard Cosell's Wild World of Sports, and they both dress like Cosell. And they've installed a speaker on top of the car in order to give play by play during the races.
Or maybe the subplots tied into Lane Meyer (John Cusack)'s family: Mom's cooking "experiments" that may be more dangerous cooked than raw. Or his brother's proclivity for mail order junk that ends up working, like lasers, a home made rocket, or a "Pick Up Trashy Women" book that delivers.
Better Off Dead is the kind of movie that would introduce a Frankenstein homage just to have a claymation hamburger sing David Lee Roth. To treat a paper delivery boy like Jason Vorhees, or let Curtis "Booger" Armstrong snort jello in the cafeteria.
South Park spoofed the overlying plot of Better Off Dead a few years ago (the skiiing episode) but what they missed about why the movie works is that it knows how stupid the skiing story is, and Holland goes out of his way to pack non-sequiturs in places you'd never expect them. And, as a result, the movie is funny when it should be trite, clever when it should be obvious, and pays off running jokes in unexpected ways.
Had it come out at the tail end of the 80's, instead of the middle of the teen movie era, I think it could've been a real dagger in the heart of the "Brat Pack" era, instead of the cult hit it is. Of course, if everyone knew about Better Off Dead, I'd have to find something else to surprise people with.
Like Real Genius.
On the other side of Wednesday's Video Daily Double, the Cap'n will finally give you his thoughts on Hot Tub Time Machine, closing the circle of "John Cusack skiing movies."
*The trailer, which feels like it played on a loop at Carbonated Video, is only a little bit better, to be honest. Neither give the film its due.
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