Review #773: 'The 'Burbs' (1989)

Combining two genres that really flourished in the 1980's - horror and man-boy comedy - The 'Burbs is a slightly eerie minor work from Joe Dante, the director that gave us genre classics The Howling (1981) and Gremlins (1984), both of which blended spatters of gore with goofy comedy much more successfully. The 'Burbs just seems to be missing something. Whether it's the surprisingly subdued Tom Hanks, who is allowed only glimpses of the energy he was so famous for in his early days, or the film's failure to really subvert any of our expectations, it's unclear.

The grumpy Ray Peterson (Hanks) has just begun his one-week vacation, which he has decided to spend lounging around in his pyjamas and drinking beer rather than going fishing or taking his wife (Carrie Fisher) and son on a trip. He is soon drawn in to best friend Art's (Rick Ducommun) curiosity at the strange behaviour of the street's most recent additions, who have moved into a gothic building that sticks out like a sore thumb. They keep to themselves and are rarely seen outside the house, but at night, great discharges of electricity flash and boom from their basement. Just what are they up to? Ray, Art and ex-army nut Lt. Rumsfeld (Bruce Dern) are determined to find out, while lazy stoner Ricky (Corey Feldman) enjoys the show from his porch.

Every now and then, The 'Burbs throws in a bit of inspiration. Whether it's the crash-zoom, over-the-top screaming of Ray and Art upon learning of possible foul play, Ricky's discovery of reality 'TV' years before morons couldn't get enough of it, or the sight of the strange family digging holes in their lawn where you get a real sense of Dante's skill at horror, we get only glimpses of the film that perhaps could have been. Dante doesn't seem invested in the story somehow, as if it was a half-baked idea that was never given the dedication it needed. The observations of suburban life seem dated, as if torn out of a 1960's comic-strip, and the various vignettes which play out in the early scenes are not as funny as they should be.

Apart from Ducommun, whose prat-falls and incessant man-child behaviour gets old very quickly, the cast perform extremely well. When Hanks is occasionally let off the leash, his semi-improvised lunacy reminds us of what he did best before all the Oscar-winning nonsense of Forrest Gump (1994), and Dern is the only consistently funny character in the entire film. But when the credits rolled, I found myself pondering the point of the film. It doesn't sway the plot in any direction other than the one you expect it to go, and although it's a mildly pleasant ride along the way, when Feldman's Ricky says to camera at the climax "I love this street!", I couldn't help but think "why?".


Directed by: Joe Dante
Starring: Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Rick Ducommun, Carrie Fisher, Corey Feldman, Henry Gibson
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #230: 'Nashville' (1975)

Films with multiple storylines and an ensemble cast are commonplace nowadays, but it all stems, really, from this film - Robert Altman's formidable Nashville. Sure, there were films before that handled large casts before, but never before had a film so successfully told an overlying story using so many characters, and have their lives so delicately intertwined. These characters have full histories and complex natures, yet they are only glimpsed and suggested in short scenes that say more in two or three minutes than most films can manage in a feature length running time.

The film takes place over the course of five days in Nashville, Tennessee, and focuses around the minor and major players in the music business, and the hangers on that seem to always be around. The key characters are Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), a spangly-suited veteran singer with political ambitions, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), a mentally unstable country music darling returning to her home town, Tom Frank (Keith Carradine), a member of a folk group trio who is trying to make it on his own and having as many woman as he can along the way, Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), a white gospel singer who is being pursued by Tom, and Del Reese (Ned Beatty), Linnea's manager husband, who seems to be oblivious to the strain on his marriage. All their lives are interconnected and are usually linked by an incident or a set-piece.

The first scene of the film sees the campaign van for Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker setting off for a tour around Nashville, and appears throughout the film. The film even climaxes at a political rally for Walker, with Hamilton and Barbara Jean both appearing on stage, and the scene brings together nearly all of the films' characters. Although I didn't get from the film that it is necessarily making any kind of political statement, it was made soon after the Watergate scandal, and was released to an America that was looking for answers. I think Nashville is making both a warm and cynical statement about the optimism and the arrogance of America, and also the confusion and the uncertainty that came with the 1970's.

Such is the beauty of Nashville. I couldn't sum up what it was about in one sentence, and couldn't describe a clear aim or message it was trying to deliver. It is a number of things, and touches a number of emotions. The real greatness is in its small moments, such as talentless and desperate aspiring country singer Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) singing to a room full of men, and then being told that she was brought there to strip; the cold detachment that Tom deals with Linnea when she reveals she can't stay any longer; the various characters who all think that Tom is singing to them in a crowded bar, as he gazes over them all to the back of the room; or the uncomfortable scene in which Barbara Jean keeps talking to an uneasy crowd rather than singing a song, as it becomes clear that she is truly losing her mind.

Nashville is one of the key films of the 1970's, and one of the finest examples of the American New Wave that emerged in that time, and produced some of the finest films to ever come out of the country. Although Altman had been around for a while at that time (he had already done the brilliant MASH (1970) and the thoroughly underrated revisionist western classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)), this is the film where he truly found his forte. It's been imitated endlessly, but never has a film managed to do so much with so many different stories. An absolute great, and one of the finest American films ever made.


Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: Ned Beatty, Henry Gibson, Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Murphy, Gwen Welles, Scott Glenn
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie