Mini movie review: Bernie

Bernie was on Mr. Mouse's list and I gladly moved it up the queue so we could watch it.  As it turns out, I liked it quite a lot and he thought it was a little boring, and wished the Coen brothers had directed it instead of Richard Linklater.  But apparently this movie is a fairly faithful retelling of what went down in the little East Texas town of Carthage in 1996, when Bernie Tiede, a sweet, thoughtful, generous, caring, gay, 38 year old assistant funeral director, shot 81 year old Margery Nugent - his friend and employer and the most hated woman in East Texas - in the back four times and then stuffed her in the garage freezer.  After Bernie was found out about nine months later, when Marge's stockbroker became suspicious that he never got to speak with her himself, no one in town could believe it - or wanted to.  No one liked Margery at all, so they weren't outraged when she turned up dead and hidden under the pot pies.  But everyone loved Bernie and were outraged that he was being prosecuted.  Shirley MacLaine plays Margery Nugent and Jack Black, finally playing it straight (so to speak) and not as the buffoon he usually is, is quite good as the loved and lovable Bernie, a man pushed unwillingly to the brink.