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In its efforts to appeal to a wider audience, The Burbs has tried to appeal to the fanbase of the popular movie Beetlejuice and the series The Twilight Zone. In its attempt, the movie fails to turn into something worthwhile. The result turns out to be a sad attempt at creating a comedy movie. The movie is set in the suburbs and revolves around a curious neighborhood which is quick to question the arrival of a new family that settles into a ruined Gothic building.
An odd thing that is worth mentioning is the fact that the residents seem to only venture outside when it is night. Who are these people? Are the only questions the the nosy neighbors could ask. While most of them seem motivated to gain an understanding of these weird people, the residents, as mentioned before, appear to have never witnessed the sun, let alone care about their neighbors.
It would be folly to claim that the neighbors are perturbed. In fact, such gloomy presence in their midst appears to amuse the residents as well: it provides them a distraction from other routine tasks like trimming the hedges or taking the dog for a stroll. In the film, Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) is once again portrayed trying his hand at new roles, this time right at the beginning of the story, when he has only just left off for his vacation, on the contrary, he decides to skip fishing, instead, chooses on staying at home and spying on the neighbors. His wife (Carrie Fisher) considers the pastime childish, but his neighbors (Bruce Dern and Rick Ducommun) are like big kids who throw themselves into the process with great zeal.
At the same time, the film is punctuated with a variety of truism fragments of suburban family life, such as, the man across the fence who lets his dog defecate on other peoples lawns, the house wife who does her gardening in the minimulistic style of halter necks. Anyhow, none of this material is remotely as humorous as one might have imagined, partly due to the fact that these are all highly characterized assumptions from a bygone period regarding what the suburbs indeed look like (I kept looking forward to a cameo of Dennis the Menace, or Mr. Wilson walking down the set).
The movie was directed by Joe Dante, who filmed the portion of the movie “The Twilight Zone” when people in an isolated farmhouse all appeared to share a universe that belonged in the pages of comic books (as for he was a Toons original). In this instance, with a related concept expanded into the length of a feature film, he appears to have lost touch with cross-pollination once again. This is something I believe he could have capitalized on: the very artificiality of the suburban landscapes that he employs. The street he uses as a filming location may, for all I know, be situated in actual reality, but it resembles that permanent small town film set which they escort you through on the Universal Tour.
Of all of the attributes the film personifies, it is tough to say which one feels incomplete. Given their basis, the actors have tried their very best and the output is visionary but still the film struggles to find the motivation deep inside. There’s no action in it. The most significant developments in the events are easy to predict, and we are correct in doing so. And by the time an explanation of the behavior of that odd family begin to trickle in, the audience is all prepared and know what to expect.
By the way, a doc with fish like features who is small and is pale has a family. This actor comes from “Nashville” and is called Henry Gibson, Oscar nominee.
Seeing him in the last few moments of the film, I thought that he was even more engaging than the normal suburban families we had watched throughout the movie. Perhaps this is what the film lacked: a funny twist to turn all our assumptions upside down. Consider this: what if the usual oppressed suburbans were all simply emaciated nerds, and the evil new family had come to settle in dressed up as all-American? Just putting it out there.
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