Review of The 'Burbs (1989) by Zane T — 22 May 2009

Suburbanites are a crazy bunch of people. They work in the big city but choose to live in subdivisions where they worry too much about their neighbor's lawn and watch each other from the hidden comfort of their kitchen windows. The Burbs is a nice ying to Rear Window's yang. If you watch it closely, all action in this movie is self-contained in a cul-de-sac such as Jimmy Stewart watched the neighbors from across his apartment courtyard. While this movie doesn't touch on every type of suburban dweller, it does hit off on a few. Bruce Dern is the retired military officer whose bought a nice home and has a beautiful trophy wife who enjoys showing off her body. There is the old cranky man who lives down at the end of the street and would rather sneer at you than smile. Corey Feldman plays the teenager whose parents have left him alone as they go on their own vacation or business trip leaving him with the responsibility of painting the house but instead he drinks beer and invites his friends over for a party. Rick Ducommun is the one neighbor everyone doesn't like, who believes those strange neighbors are the next Manson family. He raids people's fridges and sticks his nose where it doesn't belong. The strange neighbors are the Clopeks, brilliantly played by Henry Gibson as a pathologist, Brother Theodore as the creepy one and Courtney Gains as the creepier one, a nice nod to his role as Malachi in Children of the Corn. The basic plot of the movie is that the Clopeks make a lot of noise at night and neighbors notice them digging in their backyards during the middle of thunderstorms. Are they satan worshippers? Murderers? What exactly is going on next door? Tom Hanks plays the average joe who at first doesn't believe his strange neighbors are bad guys but soon believes that. This is one of Hanks' last roles in the 1980's goofiness that made him a star in the first place. He has a bug out scene at the end. I like that they cast him and Carrie Fisher as a mid-30's married couple trying to be Ozzy and Harriet.

The movie more of less follows the deus ex machina at the end with a big explosion and a revelation that seems more like tying up loose ends rather than ending a movie.

If you've ever lived or are currently living in a neighborhood similar to this, then you will probably find it amusing.