Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: My Boyfriend's Back

This movie from 1993 is a very oddball romantic comedy filmed in Austin about a guy in high school who comes back as a zombie to try to win the girl he loves and take her to prom. I have no memory of it from when it came out, so I guess we certainly overlooked it. It's mildly amusing, although it sometimes crosses the line from goofy to just plain stupid. But I laughed quite a bit.

What makes it a more interesting movie in hindsight, though, is the cast. The two leads, Andrew Lowery and Traci Lind, are pretty obscure. Neither of them have been in anything in more than a decade. But further down in the credits you've got solid character actors like Cloris Leachman, Edward Herrman, Austin Pendleton, Bob Dishy, and Paul Dooley. Even further down you've got Matthew Fox, who starred in PARTY OF FIVE and LOST, playing an obnoxious jock, and future Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a high school bully. Then, in a tiny role (as Guy #2), Matthew McConaughey. His one line of dialogue: "Hey, isn't that Buck's girlfriend?" The minister at the funeral is Jerry Haynes, longtime Dallas sportscaster but best known as the host of the kid's TV show, MR. PEPPERMINT. Tiniest part of all by a future star: Renee Zellweger sitting at a table in a school cafeteria, on screen for a couple of seconds with no dialogue. Watching MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK is a little like a scavenger hunt as you watch for those fleeting appearances. I'm glad we finally saw it. The whole movie is on YouTube if you want to check it out.