ViewGuide

Created Jun 20, 2012 11:27PM PST • Edited Jun 05, 2022 09:54AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Bernie – the most genuinely funny movie of the year and the most pleasant surprise – mixes amateur townsfolk with big name stars to create an only-in-America story, and a true one at that. Well, truthy.

   Assistant funeral home director Bernie Tiede really did murder the richest widow in his small town, only to have the town rally to his defense, a story documented in Texas Monthly as Midnight in the Garden of East Texas. The author of that piece went on to write Bernie with Texan director Richard Linklater, who recruited two of his trusted leading men to play Bernie and the DA who put him away.

   Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey are terrific in those roles, though are nearly eclipsed by the real townspeople who speak directly to the camera about their impressions of Bernie, the shrew he shot and the social structure of East Texas. The result is riotously funny, the freshest comedy in a long, long time.

   Linklater also directed Black in The School of Rock, the movie I called the most successful of their careers. That’s still true, at least from a commercial POV. However it’s now equaled from a sociological and satisfaction POV. Bernie is that perceptive, that engaging, that great.

   Viewer’s note: Bernie is only playing at senior citizen times slots in a few theaters. 5:45PM show anyone? Not to worry. It’s bound to be on-demand damn soon.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Jack Black becomes Bernie Tiede, the most likable murderer anyone ever met. We’re used to Black being over-the-top in his roles, so this stunningly deft performance charms, tickles and amazes in no small part because of how understated it is, even though Tiede was/is a flamboyant guy. Two indelible scenes remain in the mind’s eye: Black as Tiede singing along to a pop-gospel song while driving his big ol’ Lincoln, and Black interviewing the real Tiede over the end-credits, fixated like a laser on the man he would become. There may not have been justice for Bernie Tiede in East Texas, but if there’s justice for Jack Black in Hollywood, he’ll receive an Oscar nomination for this performance.

   Matthew McConaughey should give up RomComs and dedicate the rest of his career to Texas lawmen, with his Danny Buck from Bernie joining his Buddy Deeds from Lone Star as the role models. He gets Buck just right: self-aggrandizing yet earnest, prone to buffoonery yet tremendously savvy. It’s a notably unglamorous performance from an actor who too often plays the pretty boy. Texas becomes him.

   Their supporting cast – professional and amateur – are quite good.

   • Shirley MacLaine doesn’t have to work hard as Marjorie Nugent, the mean old lady that Tiede befriends and ultimately shoots. Still, it’s a treat to share the same astral plane as the Great MacLaine.
   • Rick Dial engagingly plays the funeral home director who first employes Tiede. Dial also played the nice-guy bossman in Sling Blade, another Southern classic.
   • Brady Coleman richly plays Scrappy Holmes, defense attorney. Yes, that’s what everybody calls him. Scrappy. You can look it up.
   • Kudos to Ira Bounds, Kathy Gollmitzer and the other locals who play the, well, locals. And did we see that one woman’s name was McConaughey? Could that have been Matthew’s Mom?

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

   The townspeople

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

   The townspeople

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Richard Linklater mixes documentary and dramatic techniques to create his film, the former making extensive use of townspeople and their rich Texas vernacular. About the mean old widow who got murdered, one man said “If she had held her nose any higher, she would have drowned in a rainstorm."

    No screenwriter can top that.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Richard Linklater famously directed McConaughey in Dazed and Confused and Black in The School of Rock. Nice he got the band back together in Bernie.

12. Play Perfect 5.0

    LOL, mostly true and truly insightful: That’s quite a trifecta.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Good 3.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

    You gotta appreciate a grown-up and deeply entertaining movie that’s only mildly risqué, reaching that modest level of edginess by hitting 1.7 on the Rudeness scale, just 1.6 on the Violence scale and a mere 1.4 on the Sex scale.

17. Sex Innocent 1.4

18. Violence Fierce 1.6

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Truthy? Bernie Tiede really did shoot Marjorie Nugent to death and was convicted of her murder, that’s for sure. Was it Murder in the First Degree? Was there a change of venue? Was there any doubt he was homosexual, and more importantly, did he video himself having sex with married men in town? The movie plays fast and loose with some of these questions, while completely eliding the last one. Truthy.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0