THE STORY – A dysfunctional couple head to a remote cabin to supposedly reconnect, but each has secret plans to kill the other.
THE CAST – Samara Weaving, Jason Segel, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle & Keith Jardine
THE TEAM – Jorma Taccone (Director), Nick Kocher (Writer) & Brian McElhaney (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
Meet Dan (Jason Segel). A film director who only made one film and now makes pop-up ads, he’s a sad-sack who seems resigned to living a life controlled by other people. But he has plans to take back control for himself. After his latest shoot wraps, he makes a big deal to a crew member about going to his dad’s cabin in upstate New York on a weekend hiking trip with his wife, stage actress Lisa (Samara Weaving). The weather looks like it’s going to be bad, he’s worried, but she’s insistent! He just hopes nothing bad happens to her. It’s obvious that he’s playing this up, and sure enough, it turns out he’s planning to kill her. Before he can work up the courage and strength to knock her out with chloroform, though, she turns the tables on him by sticking him with a taser. But unbeknownst to Dan, Lisa was also planning to kill him this weekend. Each blames the other for the deteriorating state of their marriage, and their resentment has been building up for so long that it has festered into something toxic. Before long, their fighting turns physical, and they shoot a gun through the ceiling, causing three people to come crashing down from the attic: escaped convicts Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Todd (Keith Jardine), and Allegra, the corrections officer in love with Pete who helped them escape. Now, Dan and Lisa are going to have to overcome their deep hatred for one another and work together in order to survive.
Jorma Taccone’s “Over Your Dead Body,” which is a remake of the Norwegian film “The Trip,” begins as a very funny examination of marital discord before descending into a gonzo live-action spectacle of cartoon violence. The drama between Dan and Lisa feels relatable, as does their ineptitude at killing each other. Their confrontation at the cabin is every long-suffering married couple’s worst arguments rolled into one, an exorcism of every little lingering resentment that has built up over the years: His lack of ambition, her low-rent acting gigs, his inability to listen, her Australian accent… they lay it all out on the table in hilarious dialogue exchanges. Weaving and Segel have combustible comedic chemistry. Her deadpan is the perfect counter to his affability, and they seem to feed off each other’s energy, constantly trying to one-up each other. They capture a couple that has been so unhappy with one another for so long that they get more joy out of hurting each other than helping. Due to their commitment and the hilarious dialogue, it’s a lot of fun to watch Dan and Lisa sniping at each other.
While the dialogue in Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney’s screenplay is often incredibly funny, the screenplay’s structure has some issues. The first half flows well into the second, but once the trio of criminals enter the film, it starts running around in circles. The situations the characters get into are often funny and always entertaining, but 105 minutes is just unconscionably long for a comedy as wacky as this. In order to keep the film moving when the plot stalls, the filmmakers double down on the wackiness, dialing up the cartoon violence to full-on Looney Tunes levels. It’s a blast to watch, especially with a crowd, because the makeup effects are fantastically gross and the comic timing of the editing is flawless, but, at a certain point, it becomes too much. It’s great that Taccone and his cast will do just about anything for a laugh, and they absolutely get plenty of them, but the more the film focuses on creative ways to injure someone, the less resonant the story becomes.
Instead of the sharp satire of modern-day relationships it starts out as, “Over Your Dead Body” becomes a gross-out comedy in its second half. While it’s very good in both of those modes, it can’t help but feel a bit disappointing that it takes such a sharp turn from something that’s both fun and perceptive to something that’s just fun. That said, the film’s second half is a lot of fun, and it constantly upends expectations about not just what happens, but how much of what happens we actually see. The special makeup effects are indelible – people take shotgun blasts to the face, foot, and ass, and knives just about everywhere else, and we see everything in all its visceral glory. This is not a film for the faint of heart, but then, marriage isn’t for the faint of heart, either. As “Over Your Dead Body” makes hilariously clear, the couple that fights together – for each other – stays together.
