Better Off Dead
| Year: | 1985 |
| Director: | Savage Steve Holland |
| Writer: | Savage Steve Holland |
| Cast: | John Cusack, Vincent Schiavelli, David Ogden Stiers |
The hallmark of John Cusack's early career as the archetypal teen from the Savage Steve Holland school of filmmaking.
Like The Sure Thing, it's only Cusack's likeability that keeps it from being the same as a million other straight to video teen comedies as Cusack plays sad sack Lane, who's dream girl has dumped him, whose Camaro still doesn't work and whose mother cooks what appears to be green jelly with tentacles, and for whom life isn't worth living - except that he can't even hang himself correctly.
I can't even remember most of the plot, except that it's a riotous day-in-the-life of for a typical teenage boy until he finds love in the most unlikely of places with a French exchange student.
Like The Sure Thing, it's only Cusack's likeability that keeps it from being the same as a million other straight to video teen comedies as Cusack plays sad sack Lane, who's dream girl has dumped him, whose Camaro still doesn't work and whose mother cooks what appears to be green jelly with tentacles, and for whom life isn't worth living - except that he can't even hang himself correctly.
I can't even remember most of the plot, except that it's a riotous day-in-the-life of for a typical teenage boy until he finds love in the most unlikely of places with a French exchange student.