My Dead Boyfriend

Never having heard about the 2016 comedy "My Dead Boyfriend" certainly didn't prevent me from sitting down to watch it here in 2025, as I had the opportunity to do so.

Writers Billy Morrissette and Arthur Nersesian put together a script and storyline, that while being semi-watchable, sort of fell short of entertaining me properly. Now, I am a little bit at a loss here, because "My Dead Boyfriend" is labeled as a comedy. But I have to say that I was struggling and failing to find the comedy throughout the 89 minutes that the movie ran for.

I have to say that I had expected quite something else than what this movie turned out to be, which was sort of an odd mixture of drama and light comedy, but without being funny.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with Heather Graham, Griffin Dunne, John Corbett and Gina Gershon. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

This is definitely not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of director Anthony Edwards's 2016 movie "My Dead Boyfriend" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

It's pre-2000 NYC. Mary McCrawley (Heather Graham) gets fired from her temp job. She comes home to find her loser temp boyfriend Primo Schultz (John Corbett) dead in front of the TV. She's left with his dog. It's a long line of loser temp boyfriends. Zoe (Katherine Moennig) is her best friend. She's mildly taken with Joey Lucas (Griffin Dunne)'s credit card. Helene (Gina Gershon) tells her about Primo who seems to be completely different than the loser that she knew. Howard (Scott Michael Foster) inspires her to write about him and enter into a contest. She finds his baby mamma Sue Watt and joins her band.

I love Graham but she's not a lead comedian type. She's more of a straight man who can do odd deadpan. I can't tell if the material is actually funny but the movie isn't. It's mildly quirky at best. This character would be cute as a twenty something slacker. As a thirty something, it's no longer cute. I don't hate this except for its weak attempts at being funny.

I guess this movie is a specialized taste, given the discrepancy between my review and the average rating, but I thought it was freaking hysterical, with the advantage of being substantially original.

Ever the optimist, I watch (or at least start to watch) a lot of so-called comedies and, believe me, most of what's called comedy is basically "story that couldn't find a better genre". Which is my way of saying that I appreciate a real comedy. Having said that, this is not your traditional Inspector Clouseau or American Pie sort of comedy --- creating funny situations that usually involve someone looking silly, slapstick, misunderstanding, that sort of thing. It's the harder, and more rarely successful, comedy of the absurd --- a ridiculous situation, where everyone behaves just slightly off-kilter. Much of that sort of thing relies on embarrassment, ie excruciating comedy, and while I like my Sasha Baron-Cohen in small doses, I find that hard to watch.

But this is something completely different. The situation is (and remains) hysterical because our heroine has such ridiculous reactions to everything, starting with her utter lack of concern at coming home to her dead boyfriend. In addition to the absurdity of each successive stage of the story, Mary, the main character, is a marvelous collection of incongruous attributes. She appears to be the embodiment of a dozen comedy stereotypes, but she's not quite any of them. She's utterly self-centered and uninterested in anything that's not to her immediate benefit or interest --- but she's Heather Graham and so, not just pretty but sweet and innocent looking, that you can't really believe her narcissism. She's a slacker and a moocher --- but she does have some real talents. She's irresponsible and short-sighted --- but she is also competent where it matters.

I'd put it in the same sort of category as _Violet & Daisy_, or _Family Weekend_, or _The Big Hit_, three other movies I can think of with ludicrous plots and characters, that all work because they buy into the storyline enough that you care what happens, while simultaneously playing up how insane their story is.

Great movie! A very light-heart dark comedy! I saw with my family and we all laughed a lot. I would never read again a critic who has give a bad note to a movie like this! Though, the first forty five minutes are clearly funnier than the last forty five minutes. The actors are good. Very few scenes are easily to predict an this help to spark the fun in this hilarious film.

I didn't know it was the 90s until the last 5 minutes of the movie when she said "We survived Y2k." There is absolutely nothing 90s about this movie. Nothing at all.

This movie is so so strange. Nothing really makes sense & I was super disappointed in Kate Moennig's character.

She is Shane!! From the L word! I had such a crush on her! And her character in this movie absolutely sucked.

The premise of the movie isn't bad, but the execution was horrible!! They should have made it obvious that it was the 90s! The 90s is such a fun decade with so much to work with! It missed the mark with the setting & with everything else.