In the first of several significant flashbacks in \u201cOver Your Dead Body,\u201d Samara Weaving\u2019s unhappy Lisa complains to a friend about a hunting trip her equally miserable husband Dan (Jason Segel) is taking her on. \u201cYou know how much I hate guns,\u201d Lisa fumes. \u201cSo dangerous.\u201d Turns out, she\u2019s actually telling two lies, which is par for the course for this twisty yet underwhelming dark comedy that views marriage as both a hyperviolent blood sport and a battle to the death.<\/p>\n
Based on Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola\u2019s 2021 \u201cThe Trip,\u201d \u201cOver Your Dead Body\u201d concerns a couple whose wedded bliss has faded along with their professional prospects. Dan directed a moderately successful sci-fi film several years ago but is now stuck shooting cheesy pop-up ads. Meanwhile, Lisa\u2019s nascent acting career is flailing. As the movie begins, Dan conspicuously informs his production team that he and his wife are going hiking in the middle of nowhere \u2014 something, he insists, the risk-taking Lisa wants to do, despite how perilous that might be. What we soon realize is that he\u2019s creating cover for his nefarious plan, which is to kill Lisa at his family\u2019s forest cottage, making it look like she disappeared without a trace in the woods.<\/p>\n
But director Jorma Taccone eventually reveals that it\u2019s not just Dan who has murder on his mind. That first flashback rewinds to Lisa\u2019s simultaneous scheming, claiming to those close to her that Dan longs to go hunting \u2014 when, in fact, she\u2019s secretly brought a rifle so that the authorities will assume he accidentally shot himself. (Whatever fears she once harbored about firearms are, clearly, no longer an issue, if they ever were.) Dan is offended when he uncovers her plot: Why would she want to kill him? At least he\u2019s justified, he believes, having caught Lisa in an affair with her scene partner.<\/p>\n
More surprises are in store as Dan and Lisa engage in a deadly standoff in the cabin, only to discover that they\u2019re not alone. Another flashback details how two convicted killers, Todd (Keith Jardine) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant), escaped from a local penitentiary with the help of Pete\u2019s girlfriend, prison guard Allegra (Juliette Lewis), and are seeking refuge at the cottage. Suddenly, the feuding married couple must work together to stay alive.<\/p>\n
One-third of the comedy troupe the Lonely Island, Taccone previously directed the big-screen adaptation of the \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d sketch \u201cMacGruber\u201d<\/a> and co-directed the endlessly rewatchable mockumentary \u201cPopstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.\u201d<\/a> For \u201cOver Your Dead Body,\u201d he teams with producer David Leitch, whose 87North shingle specializes in R-rated action-comedies like \u201cNobody\u201d<\/a> and \u201cViolent Night.\u201d<\/a> Taccone\u2019s irreverent, slyly shocking style would seem a good match for a story in which the pain of romantic discontent is paired with myriad scenes in which a variety of weapons wreak grisly havoc, including lawnmowers, sports cars, gardening equipment and a sock with a pool ball in it.<\/p>\n But despite Segel and Weaver\u2019s best efforts, they can\u2019t make this bickering duo deliciously awful, the characters proving more grating than hilariously combustible. And when Pete and his cohorts arrive, they\u2019re too broadly quirky to be either menacing or hysterical, although Olyphant\u2019s long-suffering leader has some nice moments slowly processing how dumb Todd and Allegra are.<\/p>\n Other than one queasy homage to \u201cDeliverance,\u201d the film\u2019s handling of the showdown between this drab married couple and the cartoonish criminals is rarely gripping. Instead, \u201cOver Your Dead Body\u201d delivers over-the-top fight sequences emphasizing grimaces and gross-out laughs. People aren\u2019t simply shot in the head \u2014 the bullet transforms it into a gooey slab of meat. Fingers get sliced off, stakes are driven through hands and a foot is reduced to bloody tatters. Taccone handles all this with gleeful excessiveness but once you\u2019ve seen one pulverized face, you\u2019ve seen them all.<\/p>\n A droll irony is intended to unfold alongside the rising body count. Dan and Lisa embarked on this getaway to murder one another, but they\u2019ll end up rekindling their love. To be sure, Segel and Weaving are much more winning once their characters start warming to one another. Still, the film feels like a missed opportunity for Weaving, who became a scream queen in the \u201cReady or Not\u201d<\/a> films. In those movies, as an unsuspecting bride thrust into a life-or-death situation, she appealingly balanced a convincing physical performance with an understated comedic streak, her beleaguered character enduring one absurdity after another.<\/p>\n Weaving finds herself in a somewhat similar role in \u201cOver Your Dead Body\u201d and this uneven action-comedy is anchored by her had-it-up-to-here performance, which provides a witty insight into marriage that the film otherwise ignores. It\u2019s bad enough that Lisa has to deal with Dan\u2019s insecurity \u2014 now she\u2019s got to tangle with some dopey crooks? Women have to do everything in a relationship.<\/p>\n ‘Over Your Dead Body’<\/p>\n Rating: R, for strong bloody violence, gore, sexual assault, pervasive language, and sexual content<\/p>\n Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes<\/p>\n Playing: Opens Friday, April 24 in wide release<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first of several significant flashbacks in \u201cOver Your Dead Body,\u201d Samara Weaving\u2019s unhappy Lisa complains to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6193,57344,59069,122316,1924,122317,7022,122311,48,52,51,122310,47,50,49,23995,3904,122312,122313,122315,122314],"class_list":{"0":"post-285424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-character","9":"tag-dan","10":"tag-dead-body","11":"tag-feuding-married-couple","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-forest-cottage","14":"tag-hunting-trip","15":"tag-jason-segel","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-la-headlines","18":"tag-la-news","19":"tag-lisa-fume","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","22":"tag-los-angeles-news","23":"tag-marriage","24":"tag-pete","25":"tag-samara-weaving","26":"tag-taccone","27":"tag-timothy-olyphant","28":"tag-todd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}