Director: Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Terry Kiser, Catherine Mary Stewart
Writer: Robert Klane
Weekend at Bernies is a movie with an interesting premise: Two guys have to pretend that a man who died is still alive by parading the man's corpse around his summer beachfront home over the course of a weekend. Obviously, in order for this to work, the movie has to take a large degree of license when it comes to the decaying nature of dead bodies. Fortunately, the movie is funny enough that you are probably going to forget about that plot hole.
The plot involves two losers, Larry Wilson (Andrew McCarthy) and Richard Parker (Jonathan Wilson) who work at an insurance firm and, after discovering possible embezzlement, are invited by their boss Bernie Lomax (Terry Kiser) for a weekend getaway at his beach home. The two are excited. Unfortunately, the boss was the one who did the embezzling and asks his mob buddies to take them out and they agree. The mob boss then decides to kill Bernie because Bernie has been screwing around with the mob bosses girlfriend. And at the beach, the mob hitman (Don Caulfa) kills Bernie and when the two guys find his body they fail to suspect anything because of the drugs in his shirt pocket. They soon realize their best chance of living out the weekend (while enjoying the sight of beautiful women in bikinis) is to pretend that Bernie is alive.
As you might suspect, there are some plot holes but that is not a problem. The movie has no grand designs and the plot is simply there to give the movie an excuse to force Larry and Richard to lug around a dead body. You'll probably be too busy laughing at the sight gags and the joke that nobody on the island seems to realize the guy is dead. And I mean nobody. People constantly walk up to him, talk to him, berate him for not talking, and never realize he is dead.
If you turn it on expecting high quality art then you will be disappointed. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the dead body jokes.
The movie is Rated R for some adult situations and language. I recommend it. Its a fun weekend movie. If give it a B.
