Betty White had many notable roles throughout her life, including Golden Girls, Advice and Consent, and Hard Rain. While she did amazing in most of her movies, bringing a bit of sassy humor to any role she played, her best role had to be as Mrs. Bickerman in Lake Placid.
Lake Placid is a movie about a mysterious creature attacking people in a lake in Maine. Wardens, sheriffs, and even a paleontologist end up on the case, trying to determine what the creature is, and how to stop it.
Though Lake Placid has some tense moments throughout it, the film is packed full of hilarity as well, including a moment when a second creature appears from the deep, only to be immediately killed so that the team can focus on the one main problem.
Like Jaws, this movie doesn’t use any random made-up creature. Instead, it uses an animal many people recognize: a crocodile. The crocodile is extremely large, and not at all scared by humans, thanks to it being fed by the character played by Betty White.
Though she wasn’t technically one of the main characters of Lake Placid, Betty definitely made up some of the funniest and most interesting moments. Almost all of her lines were amusing and worth quoting, and biting enough that they probably shouldn’t be mentioned here.
This is one of her tamer moments in Lake Placid, as an example, “I’m rooting for the crocodile. I hope he swallows your friends whole. You might want to arrest me for that too. Is that a crime? To wish the chewing of law enforcement?”
She’s not the only one with some great lines, though I argue that hers are the best and most memorable. However, the other cast members have some good lines as well. Besides the legendary Betty White, other cast members include Bridget Fonda (Monkeybone), Bill Pullman (Spaceballs), Brendan Gleeson (Calvary), and Oliver Platt (Chicago Med), all of which have their own funny lines and moments throughout Lake Placid as well.
Thanks to her and some of the other sassy comments throughout Lake Placid, it does fail a bit as a creature feature. After all, the death count is pretty low, and the sarcastic lines by a majority of the cast break the tension enough that it doesn’t fully feel like a horror. However, it’s still a great movie that doesn’t take itself seriously.
Not all viewers agree, however. On Rotten Tomatoes, Lake Placid has a shockingly low score. Critics gave the movie an average rating of 47 percent, while audiences thought that 37 percent was more appropriate.
It’s almost impressive how bad the movie scored. On top of a pretty good cast, Steve Miner, who also worked on movies like Friday the 13th: Part 2, House, and Warlock, was the director.
