Weekend at Bernie's (1989)
Directed by Ted Kotcheff
Two young insurance corporation employees try to pretend that their murdered employer is alive by puppeteering his dead body, leading a hitman to attempt to track him down to finish him off.
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What critics compared Weekend at Bernie's to
He’s still as immobile as Terry Kiser’s corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s, but unlike that character, Manny has a personality.
Sort of like “Weekend at Bernie’s,” if it were a surrealist indie film and Bernie engaged in absurdist existential conversation, this is the weirdest movie in Radcliffe’s career.
If any of the preceding paragraph sounds like an intriguing proposition (Cast Away meets Weekend at Bernie’s!)
??½ Written and directed by the team of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, precociously branded as "Daniels" (not even "the Daniels," just "Daniels," as in "A Film by Daniels"), this emo "Robinson Crusoe"-meets-"Weekend at Bernie's" casts Paul Dano as Hank, a desperate millennial lost in the wilderness whose beachfront suicide is interrupted by the surf-tossed delivery of a flatulent corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) that Hank embraces as a best friend, sidekick and alter ego, as well as an "all-purpose tool man" (the decomposing and leaky body functions as a water fountain, a flame starter and even a Jet Ski).
Is Daniel Radcliffe’s decision to play the said flatulent dead body in Swiss Army Man, a black indie comedy certain to invoke mention of Weekend at Bernie’s, a Shia-LaBeouf-esque way of saying “look at me, I’m being Edgy and Different”?
Equal parts Castaway, The Trouble With Harry and Weekend at Bernie’s, the surprisingly sweet and celebratory Swiss Army Man marks the feature writing and directing debut of music video directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who bill themselves as “Daniels.”
After one brief, unremarkable exchange with Aurora in the forest, Philip spends most of his time in an enchanted sleep, with M levitating him around like a comical prop, not unlike the corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s.
Someone could have mentioned that it was weird to do a Punch and Judy joke when Weekend at Bernie’s was ripe for the picking.
Somehow, the plot additionally works in a venomous snake, a corpse who repeatedly gets the Weekend at Bernie's treatment, a costumed kids' show character, and a notoriously vicious crime lord called White Death (Michael Shannon).
Dead bodies are used like “Weekend at Bernie’s” props.
Along the way, most of what can go wrong does, and for a while the movie flirts uncomfortably with Weekend at Bernie's territory.
Dayton and Faris' understated, empathetic direction smartly plays against the zaniness of the screenplay; even when it veers into slapstick Weekend At Bernie's territory, the film never loses its grounding in reality.
There are some solid comedic moments: Grandpa's words of wisdom to his mute grandson, practical advice on starting a car with a broken clutch, an encounter with a highway patrolman, and a bit that would be at home in Weekend at Bernie's.
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The boys, intermittently disguising the body with “Weekend at Bernie’s”-style puppetry and clothes that might have suited the original invisible man, embark on a mission to conjure the rest of him.
The floppy, “Weekend at Bernie’s”-style physical comedy is good for a laugh or two but grows old quickly and eventually feels like easy, go-to shtick.
Filmmaking duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert created a memorable movie-going experience with their fresh take on a Weekend at Bernie’s kind of comedy.
It would probably affect Tony Stark as well if they could figure out how to Weekend at Bernie’s his corpse without having to pay RDJ royalties.
At first they just get their marks drunk and snag a few thousand here and there, but the women grow more ambitious and reckless with their schemes, turning to chemical cocktails so they can max out credit cards while the dudes look like they’re extras on “Weekend at Bernie’s.”
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They make a sex tape, it goes up to the cloud, and they bumble around like Weekend at Bernie’s trying to track down all the copies (another suggestion that this script is a bit dusty).
"Extinction" isn't director Michael Bay beating a dead horse; it's him propping up the horse and re-enacting an equestrian "Weekend at Bernie's."