Rating of
3/4
Bernie review
Daniel Corleone - wrote on 12/08/12
Definitely one of (if not the best) acting performance of Jack Black. It takes a director with Linklater's talents to create an interesting script and the bringing out the best of his artists to make this work. Based surprisingly from a true story, it revolves around an untarnished mortician Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) who is popularly loved by his town-mates in Carthage, Texas, and a cruel old rich lady named Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), befriended by Bernie. Utilization of the actual people from Carthage was effective to bring out the realism, though we would never know if it was Linklater's script or their feelings about the unfortunate incident. It's main strength relies on the screenplay with lines: "And in the meantime he did a lot of good for a lot of people. Till he finally got caught." from Scrappy and "Well, Bernie was so nice, so accommodating, so willing to keep from hurting other people's feelings, he just couldn't tell anybody to piss off." Bernie is a good black comedy about a heinous crime committed by the most unlikely angelic persons, who can also be human as well.
