Jodi and I are big John Cusack fans – I can think of only one movie of his we’ve seen that we didn’t like (1993’s superbly casted but poorly written Identity).

So in filling our recently acquired NetFlix queue, I snagged Better Off Dead, which I missed when I was 14 but which Jodi and I watched in the last few days.

What can I say… Better Off Dead is a typically hysterical Cusack black comedy, full of neurotic and existential angst. What it also is filled with is odd bits of off-beat animation, both traditional and claymation, strange non-sequiters like the psychotic paperboy, and characters too weird to explain at all (i.e. Lane’s mother and younger brother). And we laughed all the way through it.

Moments of particular merit (or pure mind-boggling “wha”-ness):

• Cusack doing Frankenstein
• an unexpected character in an aardvark-fur coat
• the skiing paperboy

4 out of 5 claymation hamburgers.