Saturday Night at the Movies: Better Off Dead (1985)

     I hadn't seen this movie since I went to the theater to watch it back when it first came out.  But I smiled as I saw scenes that remained in my mind even 25 years after last having seen it.  i.e. A claymation sequence featuring a hamburger playing an Eddie Van Halen guitar and doing "Everybody Wants Some",   A hoodlum looking paperboy chasing John Cusak demanding he be paid "my two dollars.", and of course, Curtis Armstrong doing a variation of his Booger character (from Revenge of the Nerds) snorting snow. (Not drug "snow" but real snow).

   The premise here is a totally infauated teenager (Cusack) who has just been dumped by his girlfriend for the stud ski hero of the school.  Several hilarious but unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide follow.  Life as a teenager was never this complicated where I went to school, but then I grew up in a much smaller school.   Eventually the boy comes in contact with the French foreign exchange student who is living in the geek next door's house.  they form a bond, and she helps him get his life back on track.

    As with most of the 80's teen movies, there is the obligatory scene where the hero of the film challenges his rival to a duel (in this case a skiing race down the most dangerous ski slope in town).  And of course, all works out in the end, but I won't give way exactly how.  This is still a funny movie, years older and much more cynical that I have become.