Have you ever seen that film about two office workers who desecrate a corpse for 48 hours, parading the cadaver in front of the deceased’s closest friends? No, it’s not a psychological horror, although it possibly was for the careers of those involved with it. The film is Weekend at Bernie’s, a 1989 a dark comedy about two insurance auditors who reveal a $2 million fraud to their corrupt boss Bernie, who invites them to his beach house for the weekend to kill them and hide the scandal. However, after Bernie is himself killed by the mobsters he was covering for, the desperate office works have to come up with increasingly weird plans to make it seem that their boss is still alive. Over the course of the weekend, Bernie manages to go socialising, driving, water skiing, and even has a romantic tryst (don’t ask). Even as a corpse the guy is a party animal.
What does this film do right? Surprisingly, a lot. The first ten minutes is character development, depicting Richard as the shy loser who thinks that hard work will pay off and usual ends up humiliated. Meanwhile, his friend Larry is the 80s is the quintessential 80s asshole, smoking, drinking and taking advantage of others. His sole saving grace is his confidence and ability to think on his feet. By the time the film hits the 15 minute mark, we know exactly what motivates the characters, and when we introduce the sleazy, corrupt boss Bernie Lomax, it’s immediately obvious why he invites them to his beach house. The boys even get a smidgen of character development during the story, with Richard going out on a limb to romance the girl of his dreams (with the inevitable coitus interruptus from the inconvenient cadaver) and Larry putting himself in the firing line to save his friends from the hitman.
As for the humour, perhaps this is 2025 speaking, but the whole thing wasn’t nearly as shocking as I remember. Think gross-out humour along the lines of There’s Something About Mary. Some of the lines would no longer get a laugh in current culture, but the scenes with the increasingly perplexed hitman who keeps “killing” Bernie over and over again are hilarious.
Where they do go wrong is the pacing. Some of the jokes are really drawn out, and once they enter the third act, the two insurance auditors have used up all the best gags that can be achieved with a corpse. The revelation that Bernie was out to kill them but instructed the hitman to wait until Bernie had left actually gives the pair a very solid reason to go through with the charade, so it’s a bit odd that they reveal this knowledge in the final act and not when they first find the body. As it stands, the biggest eye-roll isn’t that an entire island of drug-crazed party animals didn’t recognise Bernie was compost, it’s the convoluted reasons why Richard and Larry don’t immediately call the cops.
Unsurprisingly, Bernie died a second time at the 1989 box office, with various move reviews filling the role of hitmen. However, the weirdness of the film still stuck with the audience, and there was enough interest for a sequel four years later – don’t ask, btw. There are some films so terrible that even I cannot revisit them a second time.
Loved this film? Hated it? Let me know in the comments below!
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