The 'Burbs.

In a previous post, I made note of the fact that every film I view is first subjected to a quick IMDB review.  That includes thumbing through several of the user and critic reviews as well as a quick meta-score check.  While The 'Burbs has a decent 6.9 IMDB rating, the reviews lean towards a less than favorable opinion.

Ultimately, I chose to watch The 'Burbs for one reason: Tom Hanks.  I love Tom Hanks.  I also have been falling more in love with the whole 80's genre.  While I firmly believe that the 90's was our golden age of cinema (before everything became "realistic" and CGI ruined most aspects of photography in action flicks), the 80's was clearly the adolescence of modern film; a time in which trial and error was the preferred method of producing films! Not only did I grow up with these films but I feel as though they grew up with me.  Unfortunately that leaves us in the current stage of film;the mid-life crisis where originality is all but lost but there are some truly great things happening.  To be perfectly honest though, the golden days are gone.

In short, I love-a me-a some-a Tommy Hanky, and I wanted to get my 80's groove on so I press play on a movie that, despite having been out for about 30 years, I knew little about.  Tom Hanks plays a typical suburbanite named Ray, married to Carol (Carrie Fisher), who has just begun his vacation and wants to spend it lounging about the house doing nothing.  My kind of guy.  What does he do? How long is his vacation? What holiday is it?  Sorry, this film is not interested in answering your questions about character development.  This is a trend in this movie, as all of the characters are cut and paste stereotypes that need no development for a plot this unsubstantial.  Hanks' cohorts Rumsfeld (Bruce Dern) and Art (Rick Ducommun) are completely undeveloped! Rumsfeld seems to be some sort of veteran who's married to some sort of eye candy...and who knows about that?! Nobody, because it's not developed. Dern just runs around with weapons while wearing fatigues casting suspicions as he goes.  Ducommun is the Melissa McCarthy of the 80's, which is to say he annoys me completely.

So now that we have our undeveloped, but understood cookie-cutter characters, we can move to the plot.  These "average" suburbanites gain a new neighbor that is causing a ruckus at night, never seen by day and has the house up-keep of the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Thirty minutes in and I've had a couple of laughs, I'm drinking the Tom Hanks Kool-Aid and I'm ready to see where this goes.  Downhill.  It goes downhill.  The gimmicky laughs are TOO cheap and few and the campy-nature of the movie goes back and forth from being supposedly intentional to seemingly accidental.  Either way, the movies because kind of plot-driven at a certain point, which is a terrible move.  Throw in Cory Feldman as...I don't know...some random teenager that owns a house?! I really don't know what he was doing.  He lived in the neighborhood, blasts music, apparently is painting the house he lives in the whole time and constantly inviting people over to watch the mayhem that continually is going down on his street between his neighbors.

By the time we finally meet the suspicious neighbors I have almost lost interest in the movie, pulled back in occasionally by the sight of Tom Hanks and the hope he will save us all (make no mistake, someday Tom Hanks WILL SAVE US ALL).  A creepy trio of (potentially Slovak?) foreign men who act like complete psychopaths are introduced to our protagonists, and this is usually the time where things start getting interesting.  It's not though.  There are awkward scenes, with awkward characters and in the moments where there is silence to build  suspense all that I feel is boredom.  It was a nice surprise to see Henry Gibson play the leader of the creepy trio, but that was the last nice surprise about the movie.  Even the twist at the end was as complicated and unforeseeable as turning a corkscrew.  I made it through the movie, and I was left with that 80's/Tom Hanks scratch slightly itched, but I can see why there has never been any pressure to see this movie.

In summary, if you must have some 80's style Tom Hanks, and you have already seen everything from Splash to Joe vs. The Volcano except for The 'Burbs...just watch Turner and Hooch again.  You'll be way happier.  I'm not sure that this movie was a complete waste of my time, but I'm sure I won't need to watch it again.  I give it one and a half stars.

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