1985 · teen · absurdist · cult
Better Off Dead
Directed by Savage Steve Holland1h 37m1985
High school student Lane Meyer sinks into suicidal depression when his girlfriend dumps him for jock Roy Stalin, the high school ski racing champion. Meanwhile, he has to deal with his eccentric family, a tenacious paperboy and an obnoxious neighbor whose mother is hosting a beautiful French exchange student named Monique.
Our read: Better Off Dead (1985) reads as a warm, breathless, inventive teen · absurdist · cult entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Warm, breathless, gentle teen / absurdist, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured.
- warm
- kinetic
- inventive
- intimate
- funny
Watching Better Off Dead tonight? Spin for your lens.
Everyone on the couch spins once and gets one craft to watch for. After the credits, compare what you caught.
Your lens for tonight
?
Everyone on the couch gets one craft to watch for. Spin the wheel to get yours. Sound on: the narrator reads your mission.
Availability in the UK · via JustWatch
More info & search links
How Better Off Dead feels to watch.
Each axis is scored by hand, not from votes or genre averages. The bar uses the film's own colours.
What watching it is actually like.
“You want hyperbolic eighties teen comedy with skiing gags and cartoon-level angst.”
Skip it tonight — You are not in the mood for suicide jokes played as slapstick absurdity.
Eight films that feel like this one.
Closest in the twelve-axis space, not “people also liked”. All films like Better Off Dead, with why →
Discussion
Make it a movie night.
Pick a mood, get a film the whole couch will enjoy, and give everyone something to watch for.
Pick tonight's film →