Movie Review: Bernie

3.5 stars out of 5

I don’t rush out to see Richard Linklater movies. It’s collateral damage as my Ethan Hawke boycott carries on. Still, Linklater and I go way back. The summer I graduated from college, his Slacker came out, which sort of defined my generation (and was set in Austin before Austin was the, you know, approved cool place it is now). A couple of years later it was Dazed and Confused, which for better or worse introduced us to Matthew McConaughey (whose character gave us the classic line, “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age”).

I enjoyed both movies, if I didn’t totally love them. Then I took 10 years off and returned for The School of Rock, which was a lot of fun—in no small part due to Jack Black’s dynamic performance—but didn’t really feel like a Linklater movie.

I waited another eight years and then went to see Bernie. The pieces seemed to be in place: Linklater cowriting, Jack Black starring, McConaughey costarring, and set in Texas like Linky’s earliest films. And they almost come up with a great movie. Almost.

I was entranced by the first half hour or so. The small-town Carthage, Texas, that Linklater gives us is such a fun place, and feels so real. And Jack Black is terrific from the get-go, giving a somewhat subdued performance as he did in the equally winning The Big Year. McConaughey dials it down a notch also and it works, with a hairstyle that immediately removes his standard cocky slacker god persona. Also, he wears a shirt. Shirley McLaine is generally successful at giving more dimension to a mean-old-lady character (though she eventually lapses back into standard mean-old-lady mode). And then there are the townspeople, interviewed documentary-style. I have every reason to believe these are actual people, and they are hilarious. Their non-actor genuineness adds so much to this movie.

Ah, but it’s the reality angle that ultimately keeps this movie from soaring. It is closely based on a true story that appeared in Texas Monthly. I imagine that was a fantastic article, chronicling the odd relationship between Black’s and McLaine’s characters (be careful what you wish for, kids!) and Jack Black’s Bernie slowly becoming unhinged. It’s a fascinating story and it makes this movie worth watching. However, Linklater is so drawn to the source material that he doesn’t transcend it. I began to wonder whether this should have been a documentary. Of course, then we’d miss out on Black’s delightful performance, in which he seems to be going for an Oscar nod, but will likely fall short. He smiles, he prances, he grimaces, he cries, and he sings and sings. He wants to slip into Tenacious D mode but he holds it in. It’s a lot of fun to witness. But ultimately this feels less like a great theatrical release and more like a good made-for-HBO true-life crime movie.

See you in 8 to 10 years, Linklater.