The 2004 Simon Pegg-Edgar Wright modern classic film Shaun of the Dead was advertised as the world’s first zom-rom-com, or zombie romantic comedy, but alas it’s not true. There was at least one other contender for that title released more than 10 years earlier: My Boyfriend’s Back (1993).
The city of Bastrop, Texas, can be proud of many of the films and TV shows shot or partially shot in or near it, from Lonesome Dove to the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Then there are some films where you wonder what they were thinking, or as is sometimes said, what they were smoking. (If it was something narcotic and addictive, there are rehab resources around Bastrop.)
My Boyfriend’s Back represents several Hollywood trends, primarily the zombie comedy, the hot girl and nerdy boy romantic comedy, and naming films after old pop songs. It’s not a good example of any of them.
The film is a comedy about a boy who dies in a pathetic attempt to impress the hottest girl in school for whom he has had a crush for years. Now there can be dark comedies---Dr. Strangelove and Heathers come to mind---but it’s not an easy mix.
As he’s dying, he asks the girl to go to the prom with him, and she says yes because, sheesh, what are you supposed to say to a boy you barely know who just (you think) saved your life and is dying. It’s a pity yes. But somehow, empowered by that yes, he comes back from the grave so he can take her to the prom. Only problem is he’s now a zombie in the post Night of the Living Dead flesh-eating mode. In fact, he needs to eat human flesh or he will rot away.
I love George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and the original Dawn of the Dead, but in those films the reanimated flesh-eaters are never referred to as zombies. They moved sort of like zombies in old Hollywood movies, of which there were not many, but those zombies didn’t eat anybody. Zombies in voodoo are just reanimated corpses brought back to serve as labor or maybe as revenge on someone you felt wronged you. (As the book and film The Serpent and the Rainbow revealed, there are REAL zombies, poor saps who were fed a special potion to make them slaves.) But soon every zombie had to be a flesh eater, when there was already a perfectly good flesh-eating monster called a ghoul.
But My Boyfriend’s Back follows this new trope. Unlike most of these however, he retains his personality, mind and memories. Then the film adapts typical teen rom com cliches like that the hot girl’s friends and family disapprove of the boyfriend, only now the joke is that they have a good reason, namely that he’s a zombie and might eat her. He does eat a couple of people as he tries to stay together ling enough to take the girl to prom. He makes it, but then falls apart, whereupon he goes to Heaven---despite having, you know, murdered a person or two---where it’s revealed in Here Comes Mr. Jordan/Heaven Can Wait/Down to Earth fashion that he wasn’t supposed to die, the coming back as a zombie thing was Heaven’s mistake, too, and so he gets to go back to the moment of his death and do it all again. He lives, she says yes---for real this time. The end.
The problem with this comedy is that it isn’t funny. They couldn’t find enough really funny lines for a decent movie trailer. The only lines that worked were the juxtaposition of the lead saying, I came back from the dead for you, with one of the girl’s friends commenting: My boyfriend won't even pump gas for me. That’s about the only funny line in the film. (OK, there’s one more. When one of his ear’s falls off, the girl worries that something else might fall off, too.)
The title also annoys in that it is part of the Hollywood trend of naming films after old songs, although to be fair in this case it almost works. Unfortunately, it’s not accurate. He was never her boyfriend. The title made me think it was a bout a teen couple whose love was so strong that he came back from the dead to be with her. Instead it’s just about a pathetic guy with a crush.