Bernie

Richard Linklater – 2011 – USA   
 

I’m a big fan of Richard Linklater's.  I admire how he gravitates between commercial films to pay the bills and more personal, experimental films like Slacker (1991) and Waking Life (2001).  Bernie is in the former category, and unfortunately it’s not one of the best of that group.  Reuniting with Jack Black after the success of The School of Rock (2003), he tells the true story of an effete and chipper Texas mortician who befriends a cantankerous window (played by Shirley MacLaine), the most hated woman in town.  They become travel companions and eventually he becomes more-or-less her servant, and gradually her abusiveness starts getting to him.  It’s intended to be a true-crime black comedy, which it is, but it seems weak and can’t escape the fact that it’s been done before and better and frequently; i.e. Gus Van Sant’s To Die For (1995) and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993), off the top of my head.  It’s not bad, but nothing special either, particularly disappointing as a Linklater product.