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DarKPrincess [ 9.0 ]
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I think that this movie was absolutely hilarious! I was laughing the whole way through! They casted the perfect people for the parts...I think this is
one of the funniest movies I've ever seen! It was really smart and well written. oh, and Tom Hanks was pretty darn cute back in the days *wink* ;-)
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Dancing_P [ 6.0 ]
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I think Joe Dante is one of the more underrated mainstream filmmakers out there, but he's so tied to a certain look and feel of 80's cinema that a lot of his work hasn't aged particularly well. The Burbs is one of those, a likeably goofy and over-the-top comedy that occupies a very specific cinematic space where it was perfectly normal to have a series of pratfalls and nutshots as well as cannibalism and murder yet push it as a family comedy. Basically, they don't really make 'em like that anymore and that's a mixed blessing. Dante's mix of Norman Rockwell-esque bucolic life and EC Comics black comedy was better served in Gremlins; this seems like a redundant effort in a lot of ways.
Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) is your average button-down overworked suburbanite. On his week off work, he notices that his new neighbors rarely make themselves seen and seem to be pursuing mysterious activities in the middle of the night. When an elderly neighbor (Gale Gordon) disappears, Ray and a couple of neighbors (Rick Ducommun and Bruce Dern) decide to investigate.
The whole 'do you REALLY know your neighbors?' plot is rather common for the time period and not really given a particularly fresh spin. As in most Dante films, this is meant to be a live-action cartoon: the production design favors the over-emphasized and broad while the talented cast works overdrive with their outsized characters. Unfortunately, the mix of hyped-up Saturday morning cereal peddling and satire is often more grating than it is hilarious. The set-up/punchline system is usually kind of obvious and despite its deliberately off-kilter feel, Dante never steers off the beaten path. As I mentioned before, though, it captures a genre (or rather a tone) that was very time-specific; in its way it's perfectly successful at a very specific, unnecessary thing.
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Love_Spoon [ 5.0 ]
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Squeaky-clean Tom Hanks, his wife Carrie Fisher, and their son live in a suburban subdivision and become a bit irritated when new neighbors don't quite behave according to the norm. Idiosyncracies and slapstick humor abounds until everything escalates into a huge war between the suburbanites. As comedies go, it's neither good nor bad. As Tom Hanks films go, it's below average. Too much.
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.0 |
| No. Ratings | : 16 | |
| No. Reviews | : 6 | |
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