Running Length: 1:29
Rated: PG (Language, brief nudity, dead body abuse)
Starring: Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Terry Kiser, Barry Bostwick
Director: Robert Klane
Producer: Victor Drai and Joseph Perez
Screenplay: Robert Klane
Music: Peter Wolf
Released by TriStar
Director: Robert Klane
Producer: Victor Drai and Joseph Perez
Screenplay: Robert Klane
Music: Peter Wolf
Released by TriStar
Dead man seen dancing in a Congo line, picking up date for the rest of the night, and fighting with her overmuscled boyfriend. Film at eleven.
The original Weekend at Bernie's is an incredibly stupid film with enough off-color, macabre physical comedy to generate some laughs. It's a perfect VCR film -- little or no attention is required, you can walk out of the room and come back in without missing anything, and the reduction of the picture to television size does nothing to hurt the film. It's not intuitive to expect a sequel to this brainless movie, but the original Weekend did surprisingly well at the box-office. Add to that the results from a big video market and a second installment became in inevitability.
Part two, helmed by Robert Klane, the man behind the previous effort, starts off basically where part one ends. Bernie (Terry Kiser), murdered in the original film, is now in the morgue. The two idiots (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) who dragged his body around through the original discover the key to a safety deposit box in his personal effects. This starts them on a treasure hunt for the missing two million dollars that Bernie embezzled from the company. Also along for the ride is Hummel (Barry Bostwick), the company's sneering head-of-security, who needs to find the money to save his job. Then there's a third group, working for some unnamed criminals, who use voodoo to animate Bernie's dead corpse so that it will lead them to the cash.
Like Home Alone 2, Weekend at Bernie's 2 is a re-hash of the first movie. You get just about what you expect -- two morons dragging around a dead body (they use deodorant to "freshen" it up) that everyone mistakes for being alive. There's even a girl who spends a night on the beach with Bernie and claims that it was the most enjoyable time she's had in a while. Of course, the corpse also gets viciously abused in every manner possible, without ever showing a scratch. In addition to repeats of what happened in Weekend 1, the body gets stuffed in a suitcase, jammed into a refrigerator, and shot through the head with an arrow.
In this movie, the body can move, thanks to a voodoo ceremony involving a pigeon (replacing a chicken that ran away -- smart move on the chicken's part). We're treated to numerous scenes in which a herky-jerky Bernie dances to whatever tune is playing nearby. However, when the music stops, the body collapses like a marionette with its strings cut.
As was true in Weekend 1, the best performance comes from Terry Kiser as the corpse, which isn't an endorsement of the abilities of the rest of the cast. Kiser's sense for physical comedy is good, and he manages to infuse this otherwise worthless movie with enough energy to keep it from the absolute dregs of 1993's theatrical releases.
Weekend at Bernie's 2 is made for a certain audience -- the indiscriminate movie-goer who will see almost anything that guarantees a few laughs. Those that belong to that group will find what they're looking for in this film. Almost all the humor is macabre and repetitive, but the film manages to be sporadically funny. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that many people will pay $6 or $7 to see a picture that has TV sitcom production values, writing, and acting.
