Plot
The story takes place in the fictional town of Greendale in "the state of Northern California" and centers on high-schooler Lane Myer (John Cusack), whose girlfriend Beth (Amanda Wyss) dumps him for the arrogant and bullying captain of the high school ski team, Roy Stalin. Lane cannot get past this rejection and decides that death is the only way out of his misery. His half-hearted attempts at suicide, however, always fail, with comedic consequences.
Lane's family is odd: his mother, Jenny (Kim Darby) is a sort of deranged Stepford wife and perhaps the world's worst cook; his genius little brother, Badger never speaks but can build lasers and attract trashy women; and his father, Al (David Ogden Stiers) is convinced Lane is using drugs. Lane's best friend, Charles de Mar (Curtis Armstrong) attempts to inhale everyday substances, like the nitrous oxide in a whipped cream can (known as a whippit), Jell-O or snow, as if it were cocaine because he "can't even get real drugs here." The film also introduces two Japanese drag racing brothers, one of whom (Yuji Okumoto) learned English by impersonating Howard Cosell.
As Lane attempts to either end his life or win back his ex-girlfriend, he gradually gets to know a new girl: a French foreign-exchange student named Monique (Diane Franklin). She is staying with Lane's neighbors (Laura Waterbury and Daniel Schneider) across the street, who are so annoying that she pretends she cannot speak English. Monique turns out to be a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers (as she calls them) and is a tough, confident soul. She helps Lane fix up his 1967 Camaro and rekindles Lane's confidence and his will to live through "language lessons" in the international language of love.
The climactic scene involves a ski competition against Roy Stalin on a treacherous slope called the K-12. As the two rivals race, Johnny, Lane's persistent paperboy pursues him, repeating that he wants two dollars that are owed (spawning the catchphrase, "I want my two dollars!").
Read more about this topic: Better Off Dead (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)