[dropcap style="font-size: 60px; color: #9b9b9b;"] B [/dropcap] ernie is a true story (or is it?) about a local East Texas gay mortician who befriends a soured old wealthy woman (who could possibly play such a role better than Shirley McLain….imagine Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolias aged to a stringy, sinewy, nasty perfection) and who gets driven to the point of desperation and kills her.
You really have to hand it to Richard Linklater, the writer/director of this and some of the most interesting comedic films we’ve had in the past twenty years (Slacker, The Newton Boys, Bad News Bears, The School of Rock and A Scanner Darkly). He REALLY knows how to get the very best out of his actors. He is a wizard at extracting the humor that Jack Black has to offer (physical humor and pure acting humor) in a way that leaves the Big Year / Nacho Libre overdone nonsense behind and brings forth the wonderfully funny side of Black from School of Rock and Tropic Thunder. He does likewise for Matthew McConaughey, as the local and very genuine DA, and that is no small feat for the horror of Fool’s Gold and Failure to Launch. Actually, with The Lincoln Lawyer and few other recent credits, I am perhaps not giving Matthew his due….but ya gotta hate those showy abs.
Bernie is imaginative, creative, well played and very, very funny and touching. It is a weird story about a weird little man and a town only out-weirded by the Minnesota town where Lars and his Real Girl lived. This is truly a hedge fund of a movie…..it has creativity and good value. It exploits the arbitrage of a conservative red-neck town that prefers to support a little gay mortician rather than string him up and gay-bash him. I loved it.