Poor man’s Fast Times At Ridgemont High: I don’t love Fast Times. I like Better Off Dead even less. I can’t figure out why this movie exists.
★★☆☆☆
I understand why Josh assigned me this movie. It’s the same reason that I assigned Animal House. He thinks it’s a really funny movie. Unfortunately, Animal House and Better Off Dead are movies that highlight the differences between Josh and I’s taste. I understand he finds it funny, but I just don’t get it. When I told him that I didn’t love Better Off Dead, he was disappointed. Then he told me he liked Better Off Dead more than Animal House. I haven’t spoken to that asshole since. For me, this is the definition of a 2 star movie: if I walked in on someone watching it I’m not gonna stop the movie, but I’m not gonna recommend this movie to anyone either.
There’s something I fundamentally don’t understand about 1985’s Better Off Dead. It stars a bunch of actors I know: John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, and Curtis Armstrong. The plot of this movie is very simple. John Cusack’s girlfriend breaks up with him to date a better skier. It’s never clearly established that John Cusack is a particularly good skier, it just seems to be something he does. Like if my wife left me for someone who’s better at brewing beer. The better skier is basically a hotter Biff Tannen who can ski. Also, his name is Stalin, because of subtlety. The remainder of the movie is John Cusack trying to kill himself, trying to ski the impossible trail that Stalin can ski, or developing a crush on the French exchange student across the street.
This movie is not without humor. I never actually laughed. But I did smile a few times. I enjoyed whenever John Cusack’s culinarily handicapped mother tried to cook anything. When she pulls a bottle of “Franch” dressing out to show off for the exchange student, I definitely almost laughed. I also really enjoyed Curtis Armstrong’s character. He played a dopey dropout who’s sort of an analog to Sean Penn from Fast Times. However, he still never really did it for me. His jokes were either too dopey or I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. For example, in one instance he snorts snow… because cocaine? I think? In another example, Stalin tells a stupid jock joke implying that Curtis Armstrong and John Cusack are a couple. Curtis laughs heartily. I thought that he was making fun of Stalin and almost laughed myself! However, Curtis continues to laugh for the remainder of the scene. Now I’m not sure if the joke was that Curtis was making fun of Stalin or if joke is that Curtis thinks Stalin is actually funny. Most of the movie is like this for me. I just don’t understand what they’re trying to do.
There’s something about the 80’s that doesn’t always sit right with me. On the one hand it brought us The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner (Director’s Cut, duh), The Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, The Karate Kid, Platoon, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the other hand we’ve got wildly popular movies like Sixteen Candles, Top Gun, The Goonies, The Lost Boys, Beetlejuice, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Dirty Dancing, and Red Dawn that just don’t seem to work for me. I can’t figure out what the common thread is, but there is no other decade that is so polarizing for me. (I know because I just looked through the IMDB t0p 100 movies for each decade). It’s not the actors: I love Tom Cruise, Josh Brolin, John Cusack, Emilio Estevez, Michael Keaton and the other stars of the movies I listed above, as long as they’re in other movies. There’s a John Hughes movie on both my good and bad list, so I don’t think it’s directors. We’ve got plots of all kinds on both sides. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the fashion, but if I’m forced to watch an eighties movie I’ll either love it or hate it.
Better Off Dead isn’t available anywhere.
Next week Josh will be watching Election. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but this is a Josh movie. If he doesn’t love it, I’ll set this whole website on fire.
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