The Burbs - 2/31 Days of Halloween

Woohoo!  Here we are in day two!  Another horror comedy for you here, though this one comes straight from the '80s.

So, so eighties.  Really though, this movie is comedy gold.  I'm shocked I'd never seen it.  The movie starts with Ray & Carol (Tom Hanks & Carrie Fisher) as a delightfully stereotypical arguing suburban couple.   They're fighting about how to use their vacation, with Ray insisting he'll do great if he just rests at home.  Quickly we're introduced to the rest of the neighbors on their cul-du-sac.  The angry veteran and his wife (who enjoys showing off her ass to the raunchy teen next door), the overly chummy guy next door, and the old man who lets his dog poop everywhere.  They're the weirdest "normal" people you'll ever see.

The talk of the neighborhood quickly becomes the new neighbors, who've moved into a decrepit lot next door to our main character.  Their house is the epitome of a spooky horror movie house, situated smack in the middle of their green little suburb.  All the neighbors are wondering if the new folks will finally clean the place up.  Instead, strange lights & sounds come from the house (especially the basement) all through the night.

The people who live inside are generically foreign (probably Eastern European) and everyone on the block is frightened of them and their weird, quiet ways.  So of course all the bored white men in the neighborhood start stalking the new neighbors.  The new neighbors are quickly accused of being satanists, body snatchers, vampires, and all sorts of unsavory supernatural creatures.

While the wives encourage the men to stop harassing the neighbors, we get the bulk of the movie: a wacky bad-ideas teen comedy... except with grown men.  I didn't say the messaging of this movie was good, I said it was funny.  It's typical in every possible way, but so much so that it quickly becomes an intentional caricature of itself.

It's a classic cold-war paranoia film about the way we perceive difference as threatening to our way of life.  This makes looking at the movie from a moral point of view sticky in a way I can't really get into without spoiling things.  But from a pure what-the-hell eighties-camp point of view, it really is hilarious.

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Entertaining 5/5        Intelligent 2/5        Unsettling 1/5
 
Scary 1/5        Gory 0/5        Funny 5/5         Artistic 2/5
  

Representation of Minorities 0.5/5        Representation of Women 2/5
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