Weekend at Bernie’s II (1993) TriStar/Comedy RT: 97 minutes Rated PG (brief nudity, mild language, tasteless humor) Director: Robert Klane Screenplay: Robert Klane Music: Peter Wolf Cinematography: Edward Morey III Release date: July 9, 1993 (US) Cast: Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Terry Kiser, Troy Beyer, Barry Bostwick, Tom Wright, Steve James, Novella Nelson, Phil Coccioletti, Gary Dourdan, James Lally, Michael Rogers, Stack Pierce, Constance Shulman, Jennie Moreau, Curt Karibalis, Peewee Piemonte. Box Office: $12.7M (US)
Rating: ***
Hindsight, it’s funny how it works. When I saw Weekend at Bernie’s II, the sequel to the surprise hit 1989 comedy, I hated it. It found it lame and unfunny. I believe I commented at the time, “That putrid smell coming from the screen isn’t the rotting corpse of Bernie Lomax, but the screenplay for this rotten sequel.” I thought it was clever at the time, but now it no longer applies. Once again, I find myself in the semi-awkward position of revising my opinion of a movie I initially condemned.
I know what came over me in deciding to rewatch Weekend at Bernie’s II. I wanted to see a bad movie so I could write a scathing review. I admit it, I have a bit of a mean streak when it comes to awful movies. By that, I don’t mean entertainingly bad movies like Troll 2, Reefer Madness and The Apple. I mean truly heinous films like It’s Pat: The Movie, Caligula and the recent Mummy reboot. There’s no reason to see any of these although it could be argued that Caligula should be watched at least once just to say you’ve actually seen it.
In any event, I had my poison pen at the ready to really rip into Weekend at Bernie’s II when a funny thing happened. I laughed. I laughed several times. I could hardly believe it, but there I was laughing my ass off at this stupid, mindless comedy about two boneheads and a corpse. I must be losing my mind, right?
Weekend at Bernie’s II picks up not long after the last one left off. Larry (McCarthy, Mannequin) and Richard (Silverman, Caddyshack II) are at the Manhattan morgue identifying the body of their deceased crooked boss Bernie (Kiser, Mannequin II). They think their troubles are over. They return to work expecting a promotion and a raise. Instead, they get fired. Their boss thinks they were in on the $2 million embezzlement with their late boss. Why else would they be at his vacation house with him? The boss tasks company investigator Arthur Hummel (Bostwick, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) with proving their guilt and retrieving the stolen money.
He’s not the only one interested in finding the $2M which might be in a safety deposit box in the Virgin Islands. It turns out Bernie was involved with a cartel and they want the missing money too. They hire voodoo queen Mobu (Nelson, The Cotton Club) to find it. She sends a couple of black homeboy-types, Charles (Wright, Marked for Death) and Henry (James, the American Ninja movies), to go to New York, steal Bernie’s body from the morgue and bring him back to life using a voodoo spell. If all goes according to plan, his reanimated body will lead them directly to the money. Naturally, something goes wrong and the none-too-bright dudes succeed only in making him move when music is playing.
It doesn’t matter how, but Bernie ends up back at the morgue where Larry and Richard sneak in and stuff his body in a suitcase. They need him to gain access to the safety deposit box. The threesome heads to the Virgin Islands where their best laid plans go seriously awry quickly. Given that their best is half-assed on good days, it’s no surprise. With all that’s going on, you’d think they have no time to socialize. It doesn’t stop Larry from picking up a beautiful native girl, Claudia (Beyer, Disorderlies), he sees walking on the beach. What they don’t know is that Hummel followed them there and is watching their every move. Also, Charles and Henry also end up back on the Islands where they try to regain possession of Bernie who appears to be having the time of his life even though he’s dead.
In the first movie, dead Bernie went waterskiing. In Weekend at Bernie’s II, he goes parasailing. He also conga dances, canoodles with a clueless girl on the beach, fights her boyfriend (and wins), scuba dives and pulls a horse carriage (which, of course, goes wildly out of control when he reaches a hill). That’s all in addition to the abuse his corpse endures throughout his latest misadventure. He’s dropped, dragged, stuffed in a mini-bar refrigerator and misplaced more often than car keys. He gets his balls crunched a few times too.
I know Weekend at Bernie’s II is in very bad taste. What’s so funny about a corpse being abused? It’s actually a crime. All I can say is that I laughed like hell at the first movie and again at the second. One of my favorite scenes is when Charles and Henry revive Bernie in the men’s room of a sleazy Times Square porno theater. The ceremony includes playing voodoo-type drum music on their boom box. Almost as soon as they turn it on, they start boogying and screeching like James Brown. I realize these characters are offensive stereotypes, but isn’t a comedy about corpse abuse offensive in and of itself?
I honestly don’t know what to say about the acting. Is it even worth discussing? McCarthy and Silverman once again nail the whole Odd Couple thing. Richard is an uptight, serious type; Larry is the irresponsible one. Kiser plays a corpse very well although I’m not sure that counts as praise. I’ll say this for Bernie though; he’s livelier in death than he probably was in life.
The one depressing thing about Weekend at Bernie’s II is watching a frail, obviously ailing James trying to keep up with his co-stars (he died of pancreatic cancer in December of that year). I couldn’t help but remember how painful it was watching Richard Pryor in Another You (his final starring role) two years earlier.
I guess the important thing is whether Weekend at Bernie’s II is funny or not. I didn’t think so before. I remember sitting in the theater feeling physically ill from not laughing. Of course, comedies have changed significantly (as have I) since summer ’93. They’re not funny anymore. Most of them are just crude, profane, vulgar and gross. Crappy movies like The House, Daddy’s Home and the Vacation reboot make movies like Weekend at Bernie’s II seem like comedy gold. I’m not saying it’s a lost classic. It will never be that. It is, however, better than I originally thought. It’s silly, stupid and completely devoid of anything resembling intelligence. I can think of worse ways to kill 97 minutes.
