Better Off Dead...

After watching One Crazy Summer, a friend (who is reading this) recommended I watch this. It's from the same writer/director (and also has John Cusack and Curtis Armstrong), so it shares a lot of sensibilities. It was a "if you like this, you'll love this" kind of recommendation. I can't say I loved it, but I did like it a bit more, enough for the half-star bump. But herein lies the problem: explaining why. Because, on all the levels that count, One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead (I'm omitting the ellipses, deal with it) are the same movie. Same main character/best friend pairing. Same world where it feels adjacent to a cartoon, where it's just enough like the world we live in to be identifiable, but just crazy enough to not be realistic. Same sense of humor. Same threading the needle between the teen sex comedies and John Hughes-style of teen movies. I don't say any of this as criticism, mind you; there are a lot of directors who stick to a genre and a style within that genre. It's just that this movie and the next one in writer/director Savage Steve Holland's filmography are so similar, they're almost indistinguishable, so to bring up all the strengths and weaknesses again would be redundant. Where Better differentiates itself is in maintaining the anarchic, cartoonish spirit through to the end. As Summer went on, I felt like it sacrificed its spirit to finish the plot. Better doesn't do that; right to the last frame, it was just as bizarre and unique and silly as it was at the first. The humor, and the style of humor, never had to get out of the way of the movie trying to movie. This is a movie I wish I saw when I was a teenager. The rapid-fire insanity is perfectly tailored to impress and take root in a younger mind, and I have no doubt if I had, it would rate higher. I don't quite love it, but I do enjoy it quite a bit.