"My Boyfriend's Back" is one of the year's worst films, an idiotic spoof of zombie movies that wants desperately to be on a par with Monty Python but doesn't have the nerve — much less the laughs.
Produced by Sean Cunningham ("Friday the 13th"), this alleged comedy blends fantasy sequences and dreams with its story of a high school teen (Andrew Lowery) who worships the most popular girl in school (Traci Lind) — from afar, of course.
He wants to take her to the prom but she's going with her longtime boyfriend. So, in one of the film's many irresponsible moments, he decides to win her over by staging a holdup at the convenience store where she works. He outfits his friend with a ski mask and a squirt gun and plans to save her from this "robber." But, of course, a real robber shows up and Lowery is shot to death. He finally summons the nerve to ask her out just before he dies.
After his funeral, Lowery rises from the dead and continues his courtship of Lind and one of the film's running gags is that no one he encounters, from his family to his neighbors, seem to think this is particularly unusual. Even when he starts eating fellow students.
In fact, his parents (Edward Herrmann, Mary Beth Hurt) begin robbing the local morgue, in case their son wants "a snack." (Herrmann and Hurt provide a very weak attempt at the oddball slant on suburbia that was better achieved by "Edward Scissorhands.")
Despite a cast of familiar comic faces, some of whom we haven't seen in awhile (Cloris Leachman, Paul Dooley, Austin Pendleton), the comedy repeatedly falls flat. There are nods to (or is it theft from) such diverse pictures as "Night of the Living Dead" and "Young Frankentstein," which would be forgivable if they were at all funny.
And for a PG-13 movie aimed at teens, there is an especially disturbing plot thread here — Lowery's pursuit of Lind as his prom date seems more born of his desire to have a sex partner than a dance partner.
The rating is for violence, sex, profanity and vulgarity.