Weekend at Bernie's | |
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![]() "Two morons. One corpse. And the plot thickens..." | |
Directed By | Ted Kotcheff |
Written By | Robert Klane |
Cast | Andrew McCarthy, Terry Kiser, Jonathan Silverman |
Produced By | Victor Drai |
Cinematography By | Francois Protat |
Film Editing By | Joan E. Chapman |
Music By | Andy Summers |
Studio | Gladden Entertainment |
Distributed By | 20th Century Fox |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Release Date | July 5, 1989 |
Runtime | 97 Minutes |
Rating | PG-13 |
Budget | $15,000,000 |
Gross | $30,218,387 |
Overview[]
Weekend at Bernie's is a 1989 American produced black comedy film starring Jonathan Silverman, Andrew McCarthy, and Terry Kiser. It was directed by Ted Kotcheff and also produced a 1993 sequel, Weekend at Bernie's II.
On a relaxing weekend retreat in the Hamptons; two hapless low level corporate employees, Larry and Richard are forced to keep up the pretense that their gracious and very dead boss Bernie is still actually alive to prevent a hitman from trying to murder them. Due to a tragic comedic misunderstanding, what they don't realize is that the hitman's real target is Bernie and he is determined to finish the job even with this bumbling idiots constantly getting in the way! Larry and Richard will need a vacation from this relaxing weekend!
Plot[]

The Invitation
Larry and Richard are best friends and two low-level corporate employees at an insurance company until they stumble across an accounting error that is costing their company millions of dollars. Their boss, Bernie Lomax commends them and as a token of his appreciation; invites them to his house at the Hamptons and a weekend that they will never forget.
Unfortunately for Larry and Richard, their keen sightedness has derailed Bernie's embezzlement and money laundering scheme for the Mafia and he needs to eliminate them before they mention it to somebody important. The Mafia however is more interested in eliminating Bernie for his sloppiness in allowing two schmucks to figure out his financial mismanagement; and more importantly because he's been sleeping with Tina, the girlfriend of the Mafia Boss!

Being Dead Doesn't Mean the Party is Over!
While Bernie is busy setting up his alibi and evidence to frame Larry and Richard for the embezzlement scheme, he unaware that he is arranging for his own hit. Shortly before Larry and Richard arrive at the Hamptons, the Mafia hitman Paulie arrives and injects Bernie with a massive drug overdose and leaves the hapless pair to stumble across Bernie's corpse.
Before they can call the police however, a huge crowd of people stumble into Bernie's house and proceed to start the weekend party. To Larry and Richard's amazement, the partygoers are all so boozed or stoned or self-absorbed―that none realize that their perfectly gracious host is no longer alive.
Larry immediately decides that Bernie wanted them to have a weekend of leisure, women, and fun and they shouldn’t let the mere fact that he died stop them. Richard is skeptical but when his long time office crush Gwen walks into the house, he can’t pass up the opportunity to talk to her after his prior disastrous encounter with her. He agrees to postpone (temporarily) calling the police and rushes after Gwen.
Hours later, Larry and Richard have barely been able to get Gwen and the self-invited guests to leave when Bernie's girlfriend, Tina the Mob Boss' Moll shows up in a drunken rage; convinced that Bernie is cheating on her as he never showed up for their romantic rendezvous (as he's sorta been dead). Unable to get a word in edgewise, Larry and Richard let her go find the body believing that she will then call the police. Surprisingly, being a corpse doesn’t seem to impair Bernie’s love life as Tina staggers out several hours later in a much better mood than before.
Unfortunately, Tina’s jealous Mafia boyfriend has had one of his henchmen watching her and reports that Bernie is obviously alive and well, thus forcing Paulie to return to finish his "botched" job.

Flies are attracted to corpses ... who knew?
The next morning, Richard is finally calling the police when he inadvertently discovers the evidence falsely crafted by Bernie to implicate both him and Larry as the masterminds behind the embezzlement scheme. Then the pair overhear an accidentally recorded phone call on the answering machine about Bernie arranging things with Paulie the hitman about killing them and Bernie’s admonishment to make sure that he doesn’t do it while Bernie is there as part of his alibi.
Realizing that the embezzlement scheme was actually Bernie’s, both of them mistakenly come to the conclusion that Bernie’s corpse is actually their best protection from the unknown hitman—providing that they can keep up the illusion that Bernie is actually still alive!
Unfortunately, keeping Bernie's corpse as seemingly animate is a much more difficult task than the duo ever anticipated and taxes their ingenuity even as Larry and Richard are now desperate to escape the Hamptons. Comedic mishaps doge their every attempt, not to mention the fact that they keep misplacing their prop (Bernie’s body) which is really confounding Paulie who keeps "successfully" murdering Bernie only for him to pop back up!

Bernie's Back One Last Time...
Finally becoming completely unhinged by the “immortal” Bernie, Paulie shoots him several times in the chest in plain view of Larry, Richard, and Gwen which leaves him with several new witnesses to get rid of. After barely subduing Paulie, the trio watch as the police cart the hysterical hitman away who continues to insist that Bernie is still alive.
Unknown to Larry and Richard, the morgue’s gurney rolls down the beach and dumps Bernie’s body out on the sand behind them...
Cast[]
- Andrew McCarthy as Larry Wilson
- Jonathan Silverman as Richard Parker
- Terry Kiser as Bernie Lomax
- Catherine Mary Stewart as Gwen Saunders
- Don Calfa as Paulie
- Catherine Parks as Tina
- Eloise Broady as Tawny
- Gregory Salata as Marty
- Louis Giambalvo as Vito
- Ted Kotcheff as Mr. Parker
- Margaret Hall as Lomax's Secretary
- Jason Woliner as Bratty Kid
- Skeet Ulrich as Extra
Production[]
Following David Begelman founding Gladden Entertainment in 1984, he greenlit several films for production including the future Weekend at Bernie's. The original script of the film was titled "Heat Wave" when principal photography and shooting began on August 13, 1988 in New York.
It used various locations including the Metropolitan Life Building on Madison Avenue, the AT&T building off Canal street, the intersection of Park Avenue and 52nd Street, Grand Central Station, and restaurant exteriors in Chinatown and the upper East Side for the next 2 weeks before moving to Wilmington, North Carolina for the next seven weeks of coastal exteriors to stand in for New York's Long Island and Bald Head Island. A temporary set of a two-story beach house was built in Fort Fischer Outdoor Recreation Area State Park as Bernie's beach house which had to be demolished after filming.
By November of 1988 however, talks between Gladden and Motown Records to permit them to use the song "Heat Wave" and the title of the film broke down causing Gladden to temporarily label the project as "Weekend at Bernie's" before it was then retitled as "Hot and Cold" for the rest of the production. Director Ted Kotcheff however disliked the title and pushed to have it retitled back to "Weekend at Bernie's" just before its release. The film had a "sneak" preview on April 2, 1989 with a test audience and was deemed successful enough to be released.
Additional/Alternate Movie Taglines[]
- Bernie may be dead, but he's still the life of the party!
- A lively comedy about a guy who isn't.
- The drop dead comedy of the year!
- Two morons. One corpse. And the plot thickens...
- Bernie Lomax would be the perfect host except for one small problem ... He's dead.
Reception[]
Weekend at Bernie's was released on July 5, 1989 in the United States alongside Lethal Weapon 2 and The Music Teacher. It debuted in 1,134 theaters nationwide and earned a total gross of $4,506,086 for its opening weekend but failed to overcome the stiff competition from such previously running blockbuster films such as Batman and Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade; and ultimately came in at 8th place of the most popular films for that weekend.
It swiftly declined in popularity and ticket sales over the next few weeks including the number of theaters shown in, ending up at the 12th most popular film after its meager 4-week box office run. Overall, it earned a total of $30,218,387 domestically and was not released internationally.
Weekend at Bernie's received relatively low ratings by the critics who viewed it as "crude", "tasteless" or as Peter Travers of Rolling Stones magazine proclaimed: "dragging one tired joke around for two hours. Like Bernie." The Rotten Tomatoes website gave it a 54% "Rotten" approval rating with Metacritic scored it "32 out of 100" and pronounced it generally unfavorable.
Audiences however gave it mixed ratings and it also did quite well in video rentals and sales. Thus the film was considered a commercial success, earning roughly double its production costs which prompted Gladden Entertainment to produce a sequel, Weekend at Bernie's II which reunited the primary cast members but failed to equal the success of its predecessor. A third film was also in the works by Gladden but the stunning failure of the sequel prompted those plans to be scrapped. Persistent rumors of an attempt to have a third film or a remake have occasionally surfaced over the years but it appears that no production company is seriously pursuing it.
The film has been released numerous times on both Betamax and VHS video tape and most recently on DVD and Blu-Ray. In the DVD versions, it has been released singly or paired with the sequel.
Trivia[]
- Andrew McCarthy originally was intended to play the straight laced Richard but after reading the script, felt that he better fit the role of Larry instead.
- This film was cited as being the favorite movie of Friends' character Rachel Greene in the episode, "The One With The Embryos".