The film received critical acclaim for its direction, accuracy in relation to the facts, "Town Gossips" mockumentary format, and particular praise for Jack Black's performance.

In March 1990, Tiede arranges the funeral of a local oilman and banker, where he meets his wealthy widow, Marjorie Nugent.

Nugent has an extremely poor reputation in town, being incredibly irritable and sadistic towards everyone she meets, including her own family, while victim blaming the rest of the world and accusing them of abandoning her.

She makes him the sole inheritor of her will as well as her financial manager, and by 1993, Tiede has been extorted into quitting his mortician job to become Nugent's full-time assistant.

Tiede soon becomes unable to manage his personal life, as Nugent constantly demands his attention away from other people, yells at him even when he does everything correctly, and becomes increasingly hostile towards everyone else in turn.

Praying for guidance in the immediate shock of the situation, Tiede buries her corpse in a large freezer chest, hoping to stall until her body can be found without any connection to him.

As her wealth manager, meanwhile, his habitual charity gets even worse; he spends $600,000 of Nugent's money on local businesses and elaborate gifts.

Realizing he will be unable to procure an unbiased jury, Davidson successfully requests a change of venue to San Augustine.

Closing text reveals that Nugent was buried next to her husband, while Tiede continues his active social life in prison.

Additionally, the various unnamed townspeople in the film are portrayed by: Marjorie Dome, Tim Cariker, Fern Luker, Jack Payne, Sonny Davis, Chris Humphrey, Ann Reeves, Kay Epperson, Ira Bounds, James Baker, Kay McConaughey, Kristi Youngblood, Kenny Brevard, Margaret Bowman, Mollie Fuller, Tanja Givens, Glenda Jone, Travis Blevins, Sylvia Forman, Martha Long, Jo Perkins, Reba Tarjick, Dale Dudley, James Wilson, Teresa Edwards, Billy Vaticalos, Rob Anthony, Tommy Kendrick, Pam McDonald, Kathy Gollmitzer, and Cozette McNeely.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Richard Linklater's Bernie is a gently told and unexpectedly amusing true-crime comedy that benefits from an impressive performance by Jack Black".

In fact, it’s hard to think of many other celebrations of small-town American life that are quite as rich, as warm, and as complexly layered, at least within recent years.

[19] In a positive review in Slate, Dana Stevens lauded the performances of the three leads, saying that both Black and McConaughey are at their best when working with Linklater.

But she reserved her highest praise for "the good people of Carthage, who, sitting on porches or the hoods of their cars, recount the strange story of Bernie Tiede and Marjorie Nugent".

The movie translation is playful and cunning but never escapes the reportorial trap; observation after the fact rarely matches the energy of experience...

The big problem with playing this same note over and over again is that while the pairing of an 81-year-old harridan and the 39-year-old effeminate mensch, whether off on a cruise together or dining at the local taqueria, may sound funny, it’s mostly just sad.

"You can't make a dark comedy out of a murder," says Panola County District Attorney Danny Buck Davidson (portrayed in the film by McConaughey).

“We felt we did not want the Hawthorn Funeral Home name or family name thought of in a dark comedy... you always know locally these are real people and families so there is a sting.”[27][better source needed] "I've now seen the movie Bernie twice and, except for a few insignificant details ... it tells the story pretty much the way it happened," Joe Rhodes, Nugent's nephew, wrote in The New York Times Magazine shortly before the film's general release.

After meeting with Tiede at the prison, she began work on a habeas corpus petition in his case, raising issues not addressed in his previous direct appeal.

[40] On January 2, 2015, an Austin, Texas news channel reported that the district attorney agreed to release Tiede and was not ruling out a future prosecution.