The 'Burbs

So familiarity is certainly part of my outsized affection for this 1989 Joe Dante satire of suburban America. But I also think the movie has wider significance in the way it presents suburban expansion as a cheerier version of manifest destiny—an unstoppable force that gobbles up land and then quickly sets about circling the wagons.

One of Tom Hanks' overlooked performances because this bizarre thriller-comedy ends so strangely but there's much to like here.

This isn't a major Dante effort, but his ability to make a good-natured satire that allows an audience to read it several ways at once is as strong as ever, and many of the sidelong genre notations are especially funny.

The 'Burbs tries to position itself somewhere between Beetlejuice and The Twilight Zone, but it lacks the dementia of the first and the wicked intelligence of the second and turns instead into a long shaggy dog story.

'Burbs is a messy mix of Gremlins, Neighbors, Rear Window and Arsenic and Old Lace. [17 Feb 1989, p.6D]

So little goes on that it might be argued that The Burbs means to be a comment on the vacuity of popular entertainment in the television age, though it's much more an example of it. The film does nothing for the reputation of anyone connected with it, including Mr. Hanks, who deserves the Oscar nomination he has just received for his work in Big. This time he's attempting to act a role in a screenplay whose pages are blank.

Dante's movie is so helter-skelter, that he can't generate the uncomfortable mood the moment requires. It's the balloon principle. The 'Burbs is so full of hot air it simply blows up in its own face. [17 Feb 1989, p.6]

I think this is a pretty funny satire with a loaded, overqualified cast. I can't believe Bruce Dern has just been 'crazy old guy' for 50 years.

Life amongst the white middle class at the dawn of the 1990s, as seen through the exaggerated eye of a super-powered magnifying glass. Tom Hanks plays the lead, a meek all-American dad who's plagued by quirky neighbors throughout his long-awaited staycation. There's a lot of truth at the core of these characters, who should seem quite familiar to anyone who's ever so much as visited a similar neighborhood, but their personalities are so thoroughly overinflated that at some point they cross a hidden line and become straight-up cartoon characters. The story, which seems to have plenty of fuel to burn in setting alone, is strangely preoccupied with other things. What seems like a simple side story (about the creepy neighbors in the big, spooky, haunted house) instead dominates the entire picture, taking the film in weird, obsessive directions. Hanks is good as the weary everyman, deeply curious but terrified of confrontation, and he enjoys good help from his supporting cast. Carrie Fisher, Bruce Dern and Rick Ducommun work well together as the not-quite-cordial neighborhood welcoming committee. It's strange to see Corey Feldman, just four years removed from The Goonies, as a hard-drinking, home-owning Spicoli clone, but it works for him. Excessively nutty and silly like any number of the era's comedies, if perhaps somewhat genre-confused.

Its quirky attitude and Joe Dante's direction are all welcome in making a sometimes intriguing, exaggerated world, but "The Burbs" is held back by a highly predictable plot and use of clichés.

I have feelings about this movie. I like most of it. I thought it was a funny kind of dark comedy and some points and I really enjoyed themes about what if this weird people from the European regions are evil it just felt like a funny kind of movie but the ending took me completely out of it.I really like the characters. They feel like cartoon characters not very subtle at all. They feel like stereotypes, but in the funny way like I'm watching some cartoon of it and all the promises are spot on and a look of the movie is good I can almost feel the weird superb vibes from the **** the way it shot the way they do it the entry the feeling of slowly going insane. It's just really nice, but I last f** 10 minutes of the movie take me me just out of it. It's just so sad it took it from 7 out of 10 to 5 out of 10 to **** I would recommend it maybe you don't get pissed off by the ending like I did but I really do like the movie, but it's just sits in the sad place because of the last five minutes.

Only seen this film once, Tom Hanks gives a good performance in The Burbs and so do a few others. The problem for me is this films storyline could of been better and it could of been funnier and more entertaining. It's a weak film with a weak formula that doesn't really work aswell as it could have.