Stars: John Cusack, Diane Franklin, David Ogden Stiers, Kim Darby, Curtis Armstrong

Director: Savage Steve Holland

Summary: An engaging teen comedy about a young guy whose dreams are rudely shattered when his girlfriend decides that she prefers the company of a ski team's butch captain to his own. To regain his self-esteem he challenges the handsome skier to a downhill race.

Lane Myer's (John Cusack) dreams are shattered when his girlfriend Beth (Amanda Wyss) decides she prefers the company of a sleazy ski jock over his own. This disheartening news leads Lane to attempt to take his own life in various ways--all of which never seem to work out. But if he can beat Beth's new boyfriend in a ski run down the treacherous K-12, he may be able to win her back. Along the way, Lane also encounters a beautiful French exchange student, a nasal spray-snorting neighbour, a rabid newspaper boy, and dancing hamburgers. "Savage" Steve Holland (ONE CRAZY SUMMER) directs this 1985 cult favourite.

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In Better off Dead, Lane Myer (John Cusack) is stuck in a personal hell. A compulsive adolescent everyman growing up in Suburbia, USA; not only does he fail to make the prestigious high-school ski team (again), but his beloved sweetheart, Beth, also leaves him for Roy, the team's popular arrogant captain. If this isn't bad enough, he's stuck with a mother who frighteningly experiments--rather than cooks--with food, a brother who builds rockets out of models, and a best friend so desperate for drugs that he settles for snorting powdered snow. Faced with these prospects, Lane opts to end it all... until he comes up with a ridiculous plan to gain acceptance and win Beth back.

Director Savage Steve Holland warps this simple, clichéd premise, letting his wacky imagination twist it into a fairly original, slightly dark, and completely hilarious 80s teen comedy. Not as serious a "suicide-attempt" movie as, say, Harold and Maudebut just as funny, the film is more a collection of screwball sketches than a narrative. Holland enlivens the high jinks with surrealistic fantasy touches, including Jell-O that crawls, a hamburger that sings Van Halen, drawings that mock its creator, and a psychotic paperboy seeking blood over a missing two dollars. Cusack puts the whole thing on his shoulders and carries the insanity with another one of his touching, obsessively romantic performances, which along with Say Anything, The Sure Thingand One Crazy Summer, made him the quintessential (and appealing) personification of lovestruck adolescence and suffering. --Dave McCoy

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1985
Release Date:	February 2, 2004
Runtime:	93 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P H E 8384
Keywords:	Comedy, Better, Off, Dead, General, Schedule
Genre:	Comedy