Better Off Dead Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Better Off Dead Blu-ray Movie Review

A good Teen Comedy arrives on Blu-ray with no real extras.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 22, 2011

That boy is obsessed.

It's matters of the heart -- and a whole lot of situational and secondary filler -- that are the driving forces in Better Off Dead, a Teen Comedy about teen emotions and teen extremes and teen craziness and teen this and teen that, but there are at least no Teen Wolves to worry about. Not in the literal sense, anyway. The ebbs and flows of love and emotion are depicted to the extreme in Better Off Dead, a movie that gleefully demonstrates the seriousness of the romantic matters at hand but juxtaposes them against all of the drama that comes with being a teenager. "It is better to have loved than lost than to have never loved at all" just doesn't apply at the high school level of development, or so this movie says; in other words, better off dead than have to see that ex-girlfriend hanging around with some jock weasel who happens to be hot stuff on the cool slopes. The movie doesn't really make a whole lot of sense -- though the plot is easy to follow -- because it's so minute-by-minute and always changing, but that's why it works so well as a depiction of teenage life and love. There's no rhyme or reason to it, very little structure, and not much purpose. That sounds an awful lot like love and life and the teenage years, hence the movie must be doing something right.

Dumped. Literally.

Lane Meyer (John Cusack) is one troubled teenage boy. He doesn't just like Beth Truss (Amanda Wyss), and he doesn't just love her. He's downright obsessed with her. He sleeps with her picture, his room is plastered with her likeness, and every coat hanger in his closet is topped with a cutout of her face. There's only one problem: Beth is totally over him. She's got her sights set on hotshot ski team captain Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier), the only one in town capable of making a flawless run down the dangerous K-12 slope. In essence, Lane's life is over. His best friend and town "junky" Charles De Mar (Curtis Armstrong) can't talk any sense into him, his younger brother won't talk to him at all, his mother's killing him with her meals, and his father thinks he's a druggie. Lane has nowhere to go but down: down the ski slope that is. Just maybe, he thinks, if he too can master K-12, Beth will take him back. But is she the best girl for him, and can he keep his wits about him and dismiss his suicidal tendencies while he toys with certain death on the slopes? His only hope of making it down the mountain and making it through these difficult times might come from where he leasts expect it, a French foreign exchange student named Monique (Diane Franklin) to whom there may be much more than a pretty face and an intriguing accent.

Better Off Dead is a Comedy built on two primary elements: oddball characters and their oddball actions. The basics of the story -- Lane loses girl, Lane can't find girl, Lane wants to end his life -- are simple enough, but it's those characters with whom the film surrounds Lane and the oftentimes crazy antics that follow that really define the movie and solidify its entertainment value. The characters are well-developed within the Comedy landscape; they're broadly painted to be sure but the script uses those few basic attributes to its advantage in generating plenty of laughs. The dialogue is witty and the humor is subtle, stemming from slightly off-center everyday events and character interactions that the cast plays with a positive deadpan sort of style that has them out of the loop, so to speak, unaware of just how humorously awkward, visually hilarious, and verbally contagious their lives truly are. The picture does suffer a bit from 80s Teen Comedy syndrome in that there are times where something is a little too far off the beaten path -- claymation guitar-playing hamburgers -- or the film features completely irrelevant throwaway scenes such as when Lane crams every one of his facial orifices with Q-Tips for no apparent reason. The results are funny, but they do give the movie a slightly more choppy feel than it otherwise might enjoy.

In essence, Better Off Dead is built on a small story from which develop big side effects and strange tales of teenage life and love. The picture throws everything but the kitchen sink at the audience, whether the various elements relate to the primary story or not. There's adventures in fast food, a loquacious Asian racer who narrates Lane's life and who learned his English from watching sportscaster Howard Cosell (complete with a mustard-colored blazer), a mother with a big heart and a good attitude but who's first in line to be nominated for world's worst cook, a quiet younger brother with an almost frightening ability to construct radically advanced gadgets and gizmos, a mean and determined paper boy, and on and on. The story of Lane, his ex-girlfriend Beth, and her new skiing flame Roy almost becomes an afterthought in the middle stretch; it dominates early on and defines the film's climax, but Better Off Dead skillfully integrates its various other subplots to the point that the film occasionally borders on being more of a series of vignettes than a straight tale of teenage love and loss. The cast is quite good, the performances more or less seamless, and the direction is steady and often subtly visually supportive of the various goings-on in the film.

Better Off Dead Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Better Off Dead's 1080p, 1.78:1-framed transfer holds up well and benefits from the increased resolution Blu-ray affords, but it's not without a couple of issues. Though the image retains a fair bit of natural grain, it's also home to a fairly heavy load of pops and scratches; some scenes are clear, others feature a heavy field. Fine detail is good but not great; clothing and facial textures fare well enough, but the image just can't compete with more modern and better-built images. Clarity and sharpness are fair, the former holding steady throughout and the latter succumbing to a couple of bouts of softness. Colors are sturdy and neither too dim nor too hot. Perhaps best of all, blocking is only minimally intrusive and there appears to be no egregious amounts of banding or edge enhancement. This isn't a transfer that's going to blow away longtime fans of the film, but viewers with larger displays will definitely enjoy the boost in detail and general stability this disc offers.

Better Off Dead Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Better Off Dead arrives on Blu-ray with an unwieldy and unnaturally loud DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Music is most certainly potent, but it's also most certainly absent of that pinpoint clarity and crispness that fresher tracks enjoy. Instead, it's often mushy and muddled, and combine that with an unnaturally high volume at reference levels and it's all the track can do to just hold together. Sound effects are equally messy; smashing glass, a blowing hair dryer, and other challenging elements fail to deliver anything even remotely resembling a natural audible texture, instead sounding like poorly-recorded and incorrectly-balanced special effects. Dialogue, too, plays on the harsh side of things and is also abnormally loud. Ambience is minimal and primarily handled across the font, and the low end kicks in once or twice in support of a heavy, rumbling engine and other powered sound effects. The track isn't a disaster, and most of the problems seem to stem from the picture's original elements rather than a problem with the Blu-ray release. Still, fans need probably at least slightly rearrange their expectations for this track.

Better Off Dead Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All that's included is the Better Off Dead theatrical trailer (1080p, 4:3, 1:33).

Better Off Dead Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Better Off Dead is one of the better 80s Teen Comedies, though not quite part of the upper-crust amongst what was a veritable deluge of like-minded films that passed through theaters during that timespan. The plot is unoriginal but the various side stories, random characters, and interesting vignette-like elements manage to make the movie more entertaining than it ought to be, though it's not quite a classic in the more plot-focused 1980s John Hughes style. Paramount's Blu-ray release of Better Off Dead features a fair 1080p transfer, a passable lossless soundtrack, and virtually no extras. This is a release that's for diehard fans of the film only; most others would probably be better served with a rental or hanging onto that old DVD copy.