Weekend at Bernie's

Bernie

For a long while, I have been thinking about a funny movie I saw a long time ago: Weekend at Bernie's. It is a dark comedy about two young guys who get invited by their boss (Bernie) to his house in the Hamptons for the weekend. When they get there, they find him dead. One thing leads to another (and another...etc.) and they are forced into pretending Bernie is still alive. I remember some very hilarious scenes. I probably saw this via video tape or on cable in the early 1990s.

Weekend at Bernie's DVD cover.

The other day I finally came across a used copy of the DVD really cheap. And so "Bernie" came home with me. None of the libraries in the system had this movie/DVD for some reason.

Memory is a funny thing. I remember Bernie as being a hilarious movie. I guess a few decades has dulled the senses. Years later, I found the movie overall charming, (still) dark, biting (satire), and very funny in places but a bit too long and rather slow to start. Ironically, after Bernie dies, the movie really gets going.

Perhaps the humor didn't seem as sharp today because after 25 or so years of working, the satire overwhelmed the humor on the surface. I think you could make this movie today without doing much except to update some costumes and ditch the cigarette smoking. The fact that people couldn't see that Bernie was dead seems too real to me in today's world where most everyone is wrapped up in their own self. What was once confined to a few in the late 80s now appears commonplace. This aspect depresses me.

The original movie spawned several sequels-which I never saw (nor care to see).

I hope my library takes this movie for their collection. It's no worse than a lot of the contemporary crap they have.

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Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_at_Bernie%27s

Written: Thursday 1 January 2015