Past their sell-by date

I revisited two so-called comedies over the last day or so and despite some positive points, neither has weathered terribly well despite being blessed with adept leads.  The problem with both is the scatter-gun approach to the humour with some hits but rather more misses and some skirting with very bad taste.

Better Off Dead (1985):  I could barely remember this one but saw fit to watch it again since it stars John Cusack -- never less than watchable -- in his sixth movie outing (aged 19 playing a very believable 17-year old high school student).  It was the first film outing from director-writer-animator Savage Steve Holland who has not had much of a subsequent big screen career and is purportedly the semi-autobiographical telling of how he reacted to being dumped by his girlfriend for a big-headed jock, as is the Cusack character here.  There follows feeble attempts at suicide, attempts at out-jocking the jock in a skiing contest (egged on by best friend Curtis "Booger" Armstrong, surely one of the least salubrious comic actors of the period), his burgeoning romance with a French exchange student staying with some unbelievably obnoxious neighbours, and an idiotic running joke of being pursued by a lethal paperboy who is looking to collect his owing two dollars.  To add insult to injury his parents are played by David Ogden Stiers and an annoyingly idiotic Kim Darby, neither of whom can be pleased to have these roles on their filmographies.  However Cusack just about makes the movie watchable, if as I had already discovered unmemorable.

Where's Poppa (1970):  This one has rather more going for it as directed by Carl Reiner with George Segal playing a oedipally-repressed lawyer living at home with his gaga mother played by cult-lady Ruth Gordon.  This casting keeps the excesses of the story from completely overwhelming the tale, but there are too many lapses into questionable humour which includes a gang of blacks in Central Park who continually mug and otherwise humiliate Segal's married brother (including forcing him to rape an undercover-as-a-female male cop!)  Segal, always an unlikely movie star, had a very good run of roles and was definitely A-list in the late sixties/early seventies, but has made far less of an impact over the last few decades.  Yet he is an able performer and one can almost feel sorry forhim as he attempts to do what is best for his horrible mother and still look for love with neurotic nurse Trish van Devere, watching his precarious grip on reality and sanity gradually fall apart.  The title refers to Gordon's constant asking after her long dead husband and is dealt with both in the final ending of the movie and also with the alternate ending available on the DVD.   It's worth a watch if only because no one would dare film this story in the same way today. 

Tags: Flawed comedies, John Cusack, George Segal, Ruth Gordon, bad taste