Better Off Dead

There are people who best remember John Cusack holding the boombox in Say Anything, and then there are those who prefer to remember him frantically fleeing a deranged paperboy in Better Off Dead. Let the Say Anything crowd treasure their moments of youthful sincerity, and leave the rest of us to space out in the back row with Cusack and his inventive stoner buddy in 1985’s outlandish cult classic, which takes all the tropes of high school movies—the jock pecking order, romantic turmoil, shitty jobs, out-of-touch parents and pregnancy scares—and twists their ears until they squeal. What more can you say about a movie that milks its depressed hero’s repeated attempts at suicide for slapstick yuks, screeches to a halt for a claymation music video featuring a singing cheeseburger and features not one, but two ridiculous and triumphant race sequences for the downbeat protagonist? It’s so absurd it actually feels more like teenage life than anything Cameron Crowe ever touched.
Fri., Aug. 1, 11:59 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 2, 11:59 p.m., 2008