I wound up appreciating BERNIE more than enjoying it, but the appreciation was real. If you can stand the molasses-like pacing and the mix of professional and amateur thespians, this is a change of pace which many will find enormously refreshing - especially for Black's understated performance and McConaughey's variation on Ted Danson's against-type prosecutor all those pre-CHEERS years ago in BODY HEAT.
Jack Black, the true lead, gives a truly remarkable restrained performance based on an actual assistant funeral director, justly beloved in his town. The classic film THE LOVED ONE does it even better, but the first third of the film is a wonderful primer on "the American way of death" that "Bernie" apparently was a master manipulator of. Had the film gone in that direction as satirical fiction rather than satirical non-fiction it might have had better box-office prospects, but Bernie finds himself in an impossible situation and when the film is more than half OVER - although this is what the film is supposedly ABOUT - he has a remarkably non-scenery chewing psychotic break (interestingly done by the director so that the audience isn't really sure at first whether he has or NOT!). The entire film is really a tour-de-force for Black (who knew that he could SING this well!?) and a "brief for the defense" in the controversial case the man became involved in.
It would have been more reasonable for Black's name to be the only one above the title, but he is joined there by Shirley MacLaine giving a performance which will remind many of her role in STEEL MAGNOLIAS (only ten years later) and Matthew McConaughey as a slimy prosecutor (best scene in the picture: when he realizes that NO ONE in his town supports him). Second best: the delightful (and accurate) breakdown map, from a Texas perspective, of the different cultural parts of their state.
The picture NAILS everything in the South-South West that makes me glad I live in the North East, but having LIVED there, I suspect the natives will view it as an affectionate self portrait. In many ways it is.
Jack Black, the true lead, gives a truly remarkable restrained performance based on an actual assistant funeral director, justly beloved in his town. The classic film THE LOVED ONE does it even better, but the first third of the film is a wonderful primer on "the American way of death" that "Bernie" apparently was a master manipulator of. Had the film gone in that direction as satirical fiction rather than satirical non-fiction it might have had better box-office prospects, but Bernie finds himself in an impossible situation and when the film is more than half OVER - although this is what the film is supposedly ABOUT - he has a remarkably non-scenery chewing psychotic break (interestingly done by the director so that the audience isn't really sure at first whether he has or NOT!). The entire film is really a tour-de-force for Black (who knew that he could SING this well!?) and a "brief for the defense" in the controversial case the man became involved in.
It would have been more reasonable for Black's name to be the only one above the title, but he is joined there by Shirley MacLaine giving a performance which will remind many of her role in STEEL MAGNOLIAS (only ten years later) and Matthew McConaughey as a slimy prosecutor (best scene in the picture: when he realizes that NO ONE in his town supports him). Second best: the delightful (and accurate) breakdown map, from a Texas perspective, of the different cultural parts of their state.
The picture NAILS everything in the South-South West that makes me glad I live in the North East, but having LIVED there, I suspect the natives will view it as an affectionate self portrait. In many ways it is.