D.O.A. Bernie and the laughs

WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S (1989)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The problem with stiffs in a comedy is that once a character is dead and lugged around from one place to another, you can only milk the gag so far before it runs dry. Sensing the occasional chuckle in an otherwise resolutely gag-free "Weekend at Bernie's" for a second time proves that with age, some movies suck the air out of the room. Maybe in 1989, the movie seemed funny to me but it is just an elongated, one-note premise, and nothing comes of it.

Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman play two friends who work for an insurance company who discover a fraudulent account. The dashing, suave Bernie is their boss (played with unabashed charm and stiff-like grace by Terry Kiser) and applauds their efforts by inviting them to his beach house in Hampton Island, NY (a fictitious island, by the way). However, there is more than meets the eye since the fraud is Bernie's doing (a mob connection), and he wants the two ambitious kids whacked. Problem is the mob knows Bernie is sleeping with the head honcho's mistress so Bernie will be whacked instead. So we eventually arrive at Hampton Island, Bernie is whacked and the boys, once they discover this, hesitate to call the police, then they try to call, hesitate, etc. They hope that Bernie's party guests will notice he is nothing but a corpse but no - the guests on this island are all drug-addicted, alcoholic idiots who want to borrow the dead man's prized possessions and nothing more. Naturally, the mistress comes around and she and Bernie are engaged in an act together that is the most inspired note in the whole film.

I did leave out that Silverman's character has a thing for a fellow co-worker (a wasted Catherine Mary Stewart merely existing as a pawn - she is better than that) whom he profusely lies to! This subplot belongs in another movie (especially the awry romantic scene at his parents' house). Mostly, we get a dead Bernie whom the boys hoist onto boats repeatedly or shake his body in front of the guests to feign the appearance of someone alive...but very little of it is funny and comes across as crass and unbelievable. Being a stiff is not automatically funny...nor is seeing one buried in the sand twice any more comical. And using two highly unlikable and soulless idiotic chums as the protagonists makes this comedy D.O.A.