Bernie (2012)

I expected to like this movie a lot more than I did.  Jack Black was the best part of the movie, which is shocking to me.  He was NOT particularly Jack Black-y, which was cool. 

This is based on a true story about Bernie, an assistant funeral director (played by Jack Black) in Carthage, Texas, who took up with the meanest old lady in town (played by Shirley MacLaine).  And he kills her.  He's now serving 50 years, but that doesn't mean he's a bad guy!  Bernie was arguably the most popular guy in Carthage, and the woman he killed was perhaps the meanest.  To say that the townspeople were in Bernie's corner is a massive understatement.  They thought he should do NO jail time. 

The movie is interesting and at times very funny.  However, the pacing sucks.  Lately I've had friends ask me about pacing; how it affects a movie, what to look for, etc.  Watch this one.  Notice that some details were stressed for ten minutes when in fact the point was made in thirty seconds.  The movie clocks in under 2 hours, but I felt like I was in the theater for 3 at least.  That's a pacing problem.  It needed about twenty minutes cut.  Wait for video for this one.