Movie Review: Bernie

When we are first introduced to Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), he is making a dead body smile and look at peace. Surprisingly, being a mortician (or, in "gentler" terms, a funeral director) is no joke of a job, it is an art. What is so interesting about "Bernie" is not the art, but rather the artist.

While I hate to use such a tired phrase, "Bernie" is a story that truly is too strange to be fiction. In short, it can best be described as "Crimes and Misdemeanors" shot like a Christopher Guest movie. However, one simple sentence, and even one review, will be hard to do justice by the absolute surprise of the movie's complexity. This is unlike any work that director Richard Linklater and actors Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey have ever done.