Better Off Dead (film)

Better Off Dead is a 1985 American teen romantic comedy film starring John Cusack and written and directed by Savage Steve Holland. It tells the story of high school student Lane Myer who is suicidal after his girlfriend breaks up with him shortly before Christmas.

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 two main interests are skiing and his girlfriend of six months, Beth (Amanda Wyss). At the start of the film, Beth dumps Lane for the captain of the ski team, Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier). Roy is handsome, popular, and has skied the dangerous K-12 slope, but is also an arrogant bully who publicly mocks Lane and unfairly rejects him at ski team tryouts. Beth also criticizes Lane's car, an old station wagon. Although Lane also owns a disabled 1967 Camaro, he has not been able to get it running.

Lane lives in a suburban development with his mother, Jenny (Kim Darby), a ditzy housewife who improvises gut-wrenching recipes for family meals; his genius little brother, Badger (Scooter Stevens), who never speaks but at the age of "almost 8" can build powerful lasers and attract trashy women; and his lawyer father, Al (David Ogden Stiers), who daily tries to stop the menacing paperboy, Johnny, from damaging his garage with thrown newspapers. Furthermore, Johnny claims that the Myers owe him two dollars for newspapers, and persistently hounds Lane uttering the catchphrase, "I want my two dollars!" Lane also regularly encounters two Japanese drag racers, one of whom (Yuji Okumoto) learned to speak English by listening to Howard Cosell.