Movie Bernie 39;s Weekend

[Bigg Gernes]

Weekendat Bernie's is a 1989 American dark comedy film directed by Ted Kotcheff, written by Robert Klane, and starring Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, and Terry Kiser. It tells the story of two young insurance corporation employees who discover that their boss Bernie is dead after arriving at his house in The Hamptons. While attempting to convince people that Bernie is still alive until they can leave to prevent them from being falsely suspected for causing his death, they discover that Bernie had in fact ordered their killing to cover up his embezzlement. Weekend at Bernie's grossed $30 million on a $15 million budget.

Larry Wilson and Richard Parker are two low-level financial employees at an insurance company in New York City. While going over actuarial reports, Richard discovers a series of payments made for the same death. He and Larry take their findings to the CEO, the wealthy and hedonistic Bernie Lomax, who commends them for discovering the insurance fraud and invites them to his beach house in The Hamptons for the Labor Day weekend. Unbeknownst to the pair, Bernie is behind the fraud. Nervously meeting with his mob partner Vito, Bernie asks to have the two killed to cover up the discovery. After Bernie leaves, Vito orders that Bernie himself be killed for sleeping with Vito's girlfriend Tina.

Bernie arrives at the island before the pair and plans the murders with hitman Paulie on the phone, unaware the conversation is being recorded on his answering machine. Paulie arrives and kills Bernie with a lethal heroin injection, then stages it as self-inflicted accidental overdose.

When Larry and Richard arrive they find Bernie's body but before they can call the authorities, guests arrive for a party that Bernie usually hosts every weekend. To the pair's amazement, the guests are too busy partying to notice he is dead, with his dopey grin from the injection and sunglasses concealing his lifeless state. Fearing implication in Bernie's death, and wanting to enjoy the luxurious house for the weekend, Larry proposes he and Richard maintain the illusion that Bernie is still alive, which Richard finds absurd. He changes his mind when Gwen Saunders, a summer intern for the company with whom he has a flirtatious relationship, also arrives.

After the party, a drunken Tina arrives at the house and demands the pair direct her to Bernie. However, she also fails to realize the situation and has sex with his corpse. One of Vito's mobsters witnesses this and, mistakenly thinking Bernie's assassination failed, notifies Vito, who sends Paulie back.

The next morning, Richard is appalled to discover Larry furthering the illusion by manipulating Bernie's limbs. He attempts to call the police but instead activates the phone message detailing Bernie's plot against them. Unaware of how Bernie died, they mistakenly believe they are still the targets of a mob hit and, as Bernie had said not to kill them while he was in the area, decide to use Bernie's corpse as a shield. All of their attempts to leave the island are thwarted, as they repeatedly misplace and recover Bernie's body, and eventually are forced to return to Bernie's home. Meanwhile, while they are not looking, Paulie makes numerous other assassination attempts, and grows unhinged at his repeated "failures".

Gwen, who has been trying to talk to Bernie, was walking on the beach when she sees Larry and Richard with the body. This forces Larry and Richard to reveal his death to her. Paulie then arrives and repeatedly shoots the corpse before turning his attention to Larry, Richard, and Gwen. Chasing after the trio, Paulie corners Larry, who subdues him.

The police arrive and arrest Paulie, taking him away in a straitjacket as he continues to insist Bernie is still alive. Gwen invites Richard to stay with her family for the week while Larry decides to go home to give them space. Bernie's body is loaded into an ambulance. However, the gurney rolls away and topples off the boardwalk, dumping the body onto the beach right behind the trio, who run away in terror. Afterwards, a young boy, who earlier buried the body in the sand, comes along and starts burying it again.

Jon Cryer was originally cast in the film, but was replaced by Andrew McCarthy.[4] Shooting took place in New York City in August 1988. The Hamptons scenes were filmed at Bald Head Island, North Carolina, Bernie's house was filmed at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, and the ferry scenes were filmed at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.[1]

On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 54% approval rating based on 26 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Weekend at Bernie's wrings a surprising amount of laughs out of its corpse-driven slapstick premise, but one joke can only carry a film so far."[5] On Metacritic, it has a score of 32 out of 100 based on reviews from five critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[6] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "B" on scale of A+ to F.[7]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the film "tasteless" and "crude" and felt that in the end it was impossible to "drag one tired joke around for nearly two hours. Like Bernie, the movie ends up dead on its feet."[8] Roger Ebert echoed this sentiment, arguing that movies centered on dead bodies are rarely funny. Ebert gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, stating "Weekend at Bernie's makes two mistakes: It gives us a joke that isn't very funny, and it expects the joke to carry an entire movie."[9]

The film's closing credits feature the song "Hot and Cold", performed by American singer Jermaine Stewart. It was written by Andy Summers and Winston "Pipe" Matthews, and produced by Richard Rudolph and Michael Sembello.[14] The song was released as a single by Arista in the United States during June 1989 to promote the film.[15][16]

On January 24, 2014, director Ted Kotcheff and screenwriter Robert Klane filed a lawsuit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and 20th Century Fox for breach of contract for profits they claimed were due from the film.[17][18][19]

The eighties gave us a multitude of disposable movies meant to be enjoyed semi-ironically to whoever isn't high on cocaine while watching them. They are often best enjoyed under the influence of lighter, more organic drugs and age surprisingly well if you don't take seriously. I don't think Weekend at Bernie's was ever meant to be taken seriously, but it's fucking awesome. It's a goddamn crime against humanity that it has a 54% rating on RottenTomatoes and whichever critic had the balls to rate it negatively should be tried at The Hague. Weekend at Bernie's is an eighties classic that should get its own Criterion collection edition and I'm here to explain why.

Weekend at Bernie's is the story of Richard Parker (Jonathan Silverman) and Larry Wilson (Andrew McCarthy), young, helpless dudes working entry-level jobs for an insurance company. They work long, thankless hours, hoping it'll eventually lead to a professional breakthrough of some sort. And that theoretical breakthrough comes when they discover a fraud, which they quickly flag to CEO Bernie Lomax (the immortal Terry Kiser). Lomax is so happy about their find, he invited Richard and Larry to his beach house for his Labour Day party, where he secretly plans to have them murdered. See, Bernie is the one defrauding his own company. His mob associates decide to eliminate him instead since he's become too careless. And they do. Nothing will ruin Richard and Larry's party though, so they'll carry Bernie's corpse around for an entire weekend to maintain the illusion that he's alive. I know it sounds stupid and it probably is. It doesn't change the fact that it's awesome.

I love Weekend at Bernie's. My reasons for loving it are probably terrible, but I love it anyway. If that movie had been made by anybody but Ted Kotcheff and Robert Klane *, it would've been a bland and derivative thriller starring Johnny Depp **. Every character and situation in Weekend at Bernie's is a clich ripped from another genre: the ambitious Wall Street up and comers, the coked-up CEO, the mob deciding of someones fate around a dinner table, the mild-mannered professional killer, Richard's cute but useless romance with Gwen, etc. It makes fun of movies like Wall Street and the Godfather without overtly lampooning them. Weekend at Bernie's laughs at the logic of bullshit tropes like a bunch of stoners would during a pot muffins and Mountain Dew movie night. And I know a thing or two about that. That's why it's such a hit with this particular demographic, it completely subdues our expectations.

Another thing I enjoy about Weekend at Bernie's is its nihilistic sense of humor. See, death is usually meant for disposable characters in Hollywood. They meet their horrible demise and drop from the face of the Earth. The only person dying in Weekend at Bernie's is Bernie Lomax himself and it's just the beginning of his adventure. Bernie built such a shallow and hedonistic world for himself that none of his house guests except for Richard and Larry actually notice that he's dead. They're just happy to use the facilities and drink his alcohol. Our protagonists don't even really care about him. They want professional advancement first and foremost. Bernie Lomax becomes a commodity that allows them to live above their pay grade when he dies, which would be pretty fucking grim in any other setting. But you know, there's a cadaver flailing around for two thirds of the film. Death never conveniently goes away.

Weekend at Bernie's is a mean, nihilistic slapstick comedy that could've easily been a Buster Keaton movie sixty years earlier. It's a weird and colorful attack on the vapid lifestyle championed in the eighties. That movie has reason in the world to be grim and it just refuses to take itself seriously and prefers making cadaver jokes instead. That is why Weekend at Bernie's is a cinema classic. I have no doubt this movie was made in a haze of cocaine and that it just resulted in something really cool somehow, but Kotcheff and Klane made it work. Weekend at Bernie's is a countercultural film in disguise. It's also really funny if you're into slapstick humor. Don't let the internet tell you otherwise. Watch Weekend at Bernie's for yourself and embrace its uproarious nihilism.

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