Better Off Dead (1985)

Savage Steve Holland’s debut, and the reason One Crazy Summer exists. A teen comedy that everyone who saw it at the right age remembers, and remembers in their own order, because the film is a scrapbook of set pieces that stick in different places for different people.

Why it’s in the canon

80s comedy comfort film, Holland’s absurdism, the paperboy, the drawings. The criteria blend is 1+3, I loved it, and I want to remember it. This is the first half of Holland’s two-picture run with Cusack, and the funnier of the two. Watching it puts me in the same room I was in when I first saw it.

What the film does

Lane Meyer (Cusack) is suicidal after his girlfriend dumps him for the captain of the ski team. That is the core. Around it: a paperboy who will not stop, a French exchange student, two dollars, a singing hamburger, a mother who cannot cook, a younger brother who is building something. The plot is real but the film treats it as a suggestion.

What stays with me

The drawings. Lane’s hand-drawn animations bleed into the live action, the same trick Holland would reuse in One Crazy Summer, and they give the film its texture. The comedies that age well are the ones with a personal visual signature, not just good jokes. This one has both.

On hand

Yes, physical DVD + digital.