Rating: 
Summary: SCREWBALL ROMANTIC COMEDY CULT CLASSIC FROM THE 80s
Review: BOD is a silly but hilariously warming romp through teenage romance and all the anguish that goes with it. Let's face it -- almost all of us who were awake during our adoloscence went through such emotions. BOD is merely a lively flick, sometimes even a spoof of itself (as in the cartoon animation during a cafeteria scene,) that manages to go on without a dull moment! Plus, there's a sweet little message: you can do it if you only put your mind to it. Yes there are some juvenile and downright bizarre moments, but they never stray out of context and their detraction from the film's merits are trivial. The movie is pretty lighthearted and yet one that you can easily identify with -- Highly recommended to own not just to rent, as it lives up to repeat viewing (even 7 times.)
Rating:
Summary: 2 dollars
Review: possibly the best John Cusack 80's movie besides Say Anything. this one has great actors and a great story. the animation is funny as hell and Cusack has never been more cooler and better. the kid who tortures him over the 2 dollars sorta wears thin but otherwise its great. highlight would have to be when Cusack is running in the woods from all of those paperboys
Rating: 
Summary: Better Off Dead
Review: This movie sometimes holds that number one spot for me. It is so funny to me. All the characters are so well written. Lane, the hero, has the wonderful opportunity to show us all what it was like to be in high school. With the stereotypical supporting cast, Lane moves from shiek to geek and back to schiek. I stole that from "Can't Buy Me Love." Hands down, for me at least, the best 80's teen movie there is! The music is awesome! "I've been arrested by you take me in..." It also has some Van Halan in it, not "Van Hagar" (also stolen). Fo Shizzle My Nizzle, this movie is in my top 5!!!
Rating:
Summary: deffinitely worth watching
Review: You'll be chasing after people demanding two dollars and snorting up mountains of pure snow after watching this film because your mailman is reading your dirty mail. Just watch out for guys who sound like Howard Cossel. Watch it, love it, get hooked on weirdly campy and funny movies from the 80's
Rating:
Summary: cult classic at it's best!
Review: This cult classic flick just keeps getting better and better with each passing year! A true laugh out loud movie!
Rating:
Summary: cusack's best teenaged movie
Review: Better Off Dead is a good movie and its somewhat of a not good movie at times. It has to be Cusack's best movie when he was younger, this and Say Anything. I liked how that paper boy always chased him "2 Dollars". so if theres a good PG movie out there that you want to watch, this is it, I recomened Better OFf Dead, its funny and insane
Rating:
Summary: Funniest movie ever? Just maybe.
Review: I don't like many '80's movies, and I like even fewer teen movies. However, I'm more than willing to make an exception in the case of "Better Off Dead." No matter how many times I watch it, this movie just won't stop being funny. It's a dead-on examination of high-school alienation and suburban depression, with a twisted sense of humor that separated it from overrated (in my opinion) '80's movies like "Risky Business" and "The Breakfast Club."In the role he was seemingly born to play, John Cusack performs the lead role of Lane Myer, a high school student driven to the brink of suicide after the girlfriend he's obsessed with dumps him for the more popular ski team captain. Lane is essentially a human punching bag, with little indignities and embarassments piling up on him until his life becomes intolerable. He has a weird passive-aggressive quality about him, suffering mainly in silence even as his frustrations mount and he tries to figure out a way to improve his lot. To some viewers, Lane might seem like a baby who exaggerates his problems, but anyone with fresh memories of suffering through high school knows better. Lane is such a relatable and enduring character precisely because during your teen years everything often seems like a matter of life and death. What really makes the movie, though, is the collection of screwball characters and director Savage Steve Holland's keen eye for inspired details. "Better Off Dead" is filled with little bizarre elements that may not have much of anything to do with the plot, but they'll make you laugh. Lane's little brother builds elaborate futuristic contraptions and studies (with great success) the art of picking up trashy women. Lane's math class sits in rapt attention as their teacher explains a geometry problem. An evil paperboy torments Lane for two dollars. A cheerleader dates the entire basketball team. Lane's weirdo mother serves a variety of "French" foods for a visiting French exchange student. Every few minutes the film digresses for one of Lane's fantasy sequences, giving the plot a stream-of-consciousness quality that was way ahead of its time in mainstream cinema. Eventually Lane finds love and takes on his skiing rival in the movie's hilarious finale, but that's not really important. What matters is what happens getting there. I've seen few movies as creative or intelligent as this one, regardless of what decade they came out of. If you haven't seen it yet, what's wrong with you?
Rating:
Summary: Gee, Ricky, I'm sorry your mom blew up...
Review: A plethora of quotable goofiness! Granted it's not startlingly intelligent, but for the pure fun factor it's got it going on. Cusack is always good. It's the peripheral characters that make this movie. The Asian drag racers, the psycho newspaper carrier, the garbage man with his one memorable line...Then there's Ricky. This is a guy on his way to becoming the next Norman Bates if ever there was one! Either that or he's a younger version of Ignatius Reiley from Confederacy of Dunces. Either way, it spells f-r-e-a-k. Definitely worth a watch, especially if you're in the mood for a heaping helping of mindless fun or a big dose of nostalgia (for us '80's kids!)
Rating:
Summary: Teen-age angst at its funniest
Review: Lane Meyer (Cusack) has the entire standard (only if they are yours not so standard) problems and people to put up with. He has a car (if he puts it together.) He has a mother that makes boiled bacon and many other delicacies. The standard mix of schoolmates and a love problem. Naturally everything is going down hill until the neighbors bring in a female French exchange student. Will she be able to get him out of his slump or cause more anguish so that he would be 'Better Off Dead'?
It is all the little things that you can relate to and the fantasy scenes that make the movie. They are to numerous to mention here but many people after watching this movie have a tendency to look at each other and say, 'I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!'
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated By Its Fans, But Entertaining Anyway
Review: So-so idiot teen comedy, memorable pretty much only for an appealing performance by John Cusack in one of his first lead roles.
Plot: various social misfits vie for respect with the cool kids, finding self-respect, and love, on the way. (Never seen THAT flick before, huh?)
My two cents: I've gotta give writer/director Holland credit for inventiveness and guts: he puts it all out there. But... he puts it ALL out there, and for every bit that really works, there's one that really doesn't. David Odgen Stiers as the concerned dad is appealing; Kim Darby as the over-the-top mom is appalling. The foreign-exchange student routine works well enough; the drug-challenged best friend doesn't. Thumbs-down to the talking scribbles, singing burgers and the whole skiing subplot; thumbs-up to the Howard Cosell drag-racers, the over-achieving little brother and the endless series of guys wanting to hit on Cusack's ex.
If you really want to see a five-star comedy about a disoriented kid with a suicide complex, check out "Harold and Maude". And, if you want to see the five-star romantic comedy starring John Cusack, it's called "Say Anything".
Verdict: rent it.
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