Weekend at Bernie’s *** (1989, Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart) – Classic Movie Review 9285

Director Ted Kotcheff’s 1989 Weekend at Bernie’s is a spirited, even memorable try at that notoriously difficult genre – black comedy – in which New York insurance yuppies Larry Wilson and Richard Parker (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) try everything except calling the police when they find their boss’s corpse on a weekend visit to his posh beach house seaside home.

Bernie Lomax (the funny Terry Kiser) plans to have the lads killed after they find a serious financial error in his company books, but soon he has been bumped off by the mob after playing away with the girlfriend of his Mafia partner, and the lads end up having to pretend Bernie is still alive, while the hitman tries to finish him off.

It is exuberantly, breathlessly played, as black farce must be. The two leads are likeably funny as they go through the most amazing contortions, while Robert Klane’s screenplay is often inventive and amusing, though it does sag badly in the middle and is very daft, perhaps aimed mostly at fairly young funny bones (though it did have a 15 video rating in 1990, re-rated to 12 in 2006).

Weekend at Bernie’s is made by a company called Gladden and that’s mostly what it does.

Also in the cast are Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kiser, Don Calfa, Catherine Parks, Eloise Broady [Eloise DeJoria], Gregory Salata, Louis Giambalvo, Ted Kotcheff (as Richard’s dad Jack Parker), Margaret Hall, Timothy [Tim] Perez and Polly Segal.

Weekend at Bernie’s is directed by Ted Kotcheff, runs 101 minutes, is made by Gladden Entertainment, is released by 20th Century Fox (1989) (US) and Rank Film Organization (1990) (UK), is written by Robert Klane, is shot by Francois Protat, is produced by Victor Drai and is scored by Andy Summers.

Weekend at Bernie’s II followed in 1993, with Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9285

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