Joe Dante
Ranked
All of Joe Dante’s big screen outings
appear here (barring the couple of scenes he contributed to Rock ‘n’ Roll High School), but only a limited
selection of his TV work. You have to draw the line somewhere. Absent then, are
his contributions to Amazing Stories,
the ‘80s Twilight Zone, Eerie, Indiana, Police Squad!, Picture
Windows, Night Visions, Hawaii Five-O, Legends of Tomorrow, Salem,
Witches of East End, Splatter, CSI: NY and The Greatest Show
Ever. I haven’t included TV movie remake Runaway Daughters or pilot The
Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy either, mainly because I haven’t been able
to track them down. If that changes, I’ll add them to the ranking.
Dante’s movie career might have been very
different if any of the many and varied projects he’d been attached to over the
past 40 years had gone ahead. If he’d directed Batman before Burton got his patchouli-scented fingerless gloves on
it. Or The Philadelphia Experiment.
Or The Phantom. Or The Mummy. Or Jaws 3 People 0. Or Jurassic
Park! At least several of those might have made him a more mainstream prospect.
Then again, who knows? You wouldn’t necessarily have expected the success consistently
attained by Tim Burton.
Dante occupies a niche, one that
miraculously led to a huge and unlikely hit in Gremlins, and as a direct consequence we were granted more big
budgeted pictures than he would otherwise have warranted. It’s a shame, though,
that the last two decades have seen only three cinematic outings. One might
have hoped some of today’s younger filmmakers with clout were more invested in
seeing the legends who inspired them continue to work. Maybe Dante will yet get
Termite Terrace or The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes off the
ground. It certainly wouldn’t do to have Burying
the Ex as his not-so-grand final wave to the silver screen.
20. Trapped Ashes
(2006)
The less said about this, probably the
better. Dante directed the wraparound, which is also the best part of a
resoundingly cheap and resoundingly weakly written anthology movie. Henry
Gibson is good fun as the not-as-he-seems tour guide, and Dick Miller pops up
to confirm his director was most definitely involved, but there isn’t really a
chance for Dante to inject his own skewed view into this scenario, a shame
since the movie-movie world of a disused Hollywood studio is just his cup of
tea. Designed as an homage to the Amicus portmanteau horrors of the ‘60s and
‘70s, all it shows up is how much more fun, atmospheric, unsettling and just straight
up cleverer they were.
19. R.L. Stine’s Haunted Lighthouse
(2003)
A 22 minute, “4D” short, Haunted Lighthouse was shown at Busch
Gardens theme parks and, unlike Dante’s later 3D The Hole, it very much emphasises its interactive effects at the
expense of content. Effects which, on the 4th D side, mostly appear
to involve water squirting at the audience. The slender plot finds a couple of
juveniles tempted to the lighthouse by another couple of juveniles, except that
the latter are of the spectral variety. And then, before they get a chance to
make “friends” (read: knock the living kids off, not that there was ever any
danger of this being other than wholesomely clunky), their ghostly parents arrive
on a ghostly ship and all are cosily reunited.
Still, Christopher Lloyd’s Cap’n Jack is
agreeably broad, and there are cameos from his Back to the Future co-star Lea Thompson, Michael McKean and… Weird
Al Yankovich. There isn’t much in the way of wit to savour, although McKean’s
response raises a smile, after Thompson notes how no one ever helped their
children before, because they were different; “Aye, and a little homicidal”. I’ll be charitable and say you
probably have to experience it in full 4D to truly appreciate it (it can be
viewed on YouTube, with a dirty great watermark across the frame).
18. Hollywood Boulevard
(1976)
Dante’s ramshackle, co-directed debut (with
Allen Arkush) is a victim of bloating a budget of peanuts to feature length,
and guilty of fully embracing the exploitation excesses of Roger Corman’s
oeuvre (including rape played for laughs and wet t-shirt hosing downs). The
self-reflexivity that would soon become the director’s trademark can only
compensate for this sort of thing so much, and as good value as Dick Miller (as
a terrible agent) and Paul Bartel (as a terribly pretentious director of trash
movies) are, they can’t disguise that Hollywood
Boulevard determinedly drags its heels over its 80-odd minute running time.
The found footage that inspired the picture
(including clips from Death Race 2000)
isn’t actually that prevalent, but neither is there enough of the Dante who
would come to be in its stead (one of the most emblematic gags occurs at the
outset, as a skydiver leaves a skydiver-shaped hole in the ground when her
chute fails to open).
17. Burying the Ex
(2014)
If The
Hole is a positive reminder of what Dante can do when delivering a script
with relatively little tailoring to his own sensibilities, Burying the Ex tends to the negative of the same. Whatever else it
has been, his career has very rarely been puerile, and unfortunately this
romzomcom, in which Anton Yelchin’s ex-girlfriend Ashley Greene won’t stay
dead, is frequently that.
Its shoestring budget is often very
obvious, and seeing Dick Miller roped into something that’s essentially a bit
beneath his filmmaker friend is a touch saddening. It isn’t until Oliver
Cooper, playing Yelchin’s half brother, takes an active involvement in the proceedings
that Dante discovers something of his mojo, just about managing to overcome the
limitations of Alan Trezza’s screenplay.
16. Masters of Horror: Homecoming
(2005)
Celebrated as one of Dante’s great works,
even though it didn’t arrive via cinema screens, Homecoming is the political equivalent of a one-joke movie that continually
beats its audience over the head with the same bloody stump of a gag.
Politically-motivated zombie veterans return from Iraq intent on voting against
the President who sent them to war…. And that’s it, pretty much.
In this first season episode from anthology
series Masters of Horror, the zombie
subtext becomes text, which for a director with a flair for sly parody and
satire is rather disappointing. Robert Picardo collects points as a twisted
political consultant, and the retro, noir-flavoured narration offers a
distinctive framing for the story, but this is merely adequate, rather than the
masterpiece its reputation suggests.
15. Masters of Horror: The Screwfly
Solution
(2006)
Dante reunited with Homecoming writer Sam Hamm on the second season of Masters of Horror, adapting a ‘70s short
story by James Tiptree Jr (Alice Bradley Sheldon) about men turning into
religiously-transfixed murderers of women, owing to a pernicious virus. The
reception of Homecoming apparently
encouraged the producers to instil more of a political flavour in the follow-up
run, and Dante’s episode is every bit as unsubtle as its predecessor. It’s a significantly
more satisfying piece of storytelling, though, even if it feels rather rushed,
and has the dubious distinction of being by far the goriest thing the
director’s done.
14. Twilight Zone: The Movie - It’s a Good
Life
(1983)
The third segment of this one-off movie
anthology is sure-footed but little more, so contrasting with the highs of
George Miller’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,
the lows of Steven Spielberg’s Kick the
Can, and the headlining-making of John Landis’ Time Out. It’s a Good Life
comes from the dependable pen of Richard Matheson, revealing itself as a
cautionary tale of what actually
happens when your wishes come true, rather undermined by Dante’s penchant for
irreverence. A teacher (Kathleen Quinlan) discovers that Anthony (Jeremy Licht)
has extraordinary powers, keeping his “family” hostage while consuming nothing
but TV and junk food.
By Dante standards, It’s a Good Life lacks drive, its twists failing to pack much
wallop. Added to which, the movie-referencing is minor league compared to the
abandon with which Explorers would
later take up the baton. Nevertheless, highlights include the Dante repertory company
(Dick Miller, William Schallert, Kevin McCarthy with a bowl haircut), a
cartoonish horror rabbit made flesh, and Anthony’s sister watching television,
mute and mouthless, just the way he prefers.
13. Amazon Women on the Moon
(1987)
Others had first dibs on this, meaning some
of Dante’s preferences, such as Son of
the Invisible Man, were unavailable. Nevertheless, he directed Amazon Women on the Moon’s standout
sequence, Bullshit or Not? (*****)
which guarantees a *** for his share of a very patchy **1/2 movie. In it, Henry
Silva, presenter of the titular show investigating unsolved mysteries, ponders
whether Jack the Ripper was, in fact, the Loch Ness Monster. Cue a re-enactment
in which a rather dapper lake monster approaches a lady of the night (Is this the way it happened? Was Jack the
Ripper in fact a 60-foot sea serpent from Scotland?)
In Hairlooming
(*) Joey Pants replaces bald spots with carpet. Critic’s Corner (**) finds Siskel & Ebert types reviewing the
lives of a real family but never really makes hay from its premise. Roast Your Loved One (***) features
Robert Picardo as the host of the roast of Critic’s
Corner’s now late husband, with lounge act comedians lining up to take the
rip out of him. Reckless Youth
(***1/2) spoofs ‘50s public service infomercials as Carrie Fisher contracts a
social disease and is remonstrated by Paul Bartel’s doctor. Left on the cutting
room floor was The French Ventriloquist’s
Dummy (***), in which Dick Miller picks up the wrong vents doll from
airport baggage, ending up with a French model who refuses to lower himself to
cheap vaudeville jokes.
12. The Second Civil War
(1997)
An HBO TV movie, originally intended as a
Barry Levinson vehicle before he decided it was too similar to Wag the Dog, The Second Civil War in part brandishes the satirical Network veneer Dante previously flirted
with in The Howling. It also takes on
matters of individual and state freedom, and the hot button of immigration, as
Ohio refuses to accept any more refugees and ends up in a face-off with the
White House.
The end result is sporadically effective,
but hampered by HBO messing with it in the edit and Dante not really being the
right man for the job. The Second Civil
War needed a more dynamic, roving eye to stir up the proceedings as they dart
from newsroom to frontline conflict to conference room debate; what we have
feels unusually laboured for the director.
There are still memorable moments, of
course; anything from James Coburn is gold dust, as is Joanna Cassidy’s
anchorwoman bashing her co-anchor’s head against his desk, trying to make him
see the severity of the situation. When the violence breaks out, the picture
takes a more severe turn, but the proceedings’ general lack of visual weight ensure
it fails to rise to the challenge. Not bad then, and its issues certainly haven’t
gone away in the two decades since, but far from vintage Dante.
11. Piranha
(1978)
Dante’s first solo effort, a cheap Roger
Corman Jaws rip-off (albeit expensive
for Roger Corman) that sufficiently charmed Spielberg to stay Universal from
suing and eventually led to Dante’s ‘80s flirtations with the big time. It was
also his first collaboration with John Sayles, whose script features piranhas genetically
bred to destroy the North Vietnamese’s river systems.
As you’d expect from Corman, there are significant
helpings of breasts and blood splashing about, but also some small degree of
Sayles’ wit. Dick Miller’s resort owner is upset to be told of the carnivorous
fish “They’re eating the guests, sir”
while Paul Bartel’s summer camp Nazi instructs his junior “People eat fish… fish don’t eat people” before one leaps from the
water and bites him on the nose. Piranha
lacks the stylistic flourish of his next feature The Howling, and its pace is somewhat slack, but you can clearly see
the through line that connects them, and the sense of humour.
10. Matinee
(1992)
The director’s nostalgic paean to
(ironically) the threat of nuclear Armageddon and the cinema of William Castle
is rated by many as his greatest work. Like a number of lauded pieces by fine directors
(see the Coen Brothers’ Fargo), I’m
left a touch unpersuaded, though. When Matinee
shines, it really shines, and John Goodman is a blast as Lawrence Woolsey, the
Castle-esque movie producer intent on scaring his audience by any means
available.
The movie-within-a-movie MANT! is one of the funniest things
Dante has ever delivered, a Fly-spoof
in which the gags come thick and fast (approaching her mutated, half-man, half-ant
husband, Claire pleads Oh, Bill, if only
you could just listen to the man in you, and put the insect aside”, to
which he responds “Insecticide? Where?”).
But the sweet-natured high school adventures of Simon Fenton’s Gene Loomis are
a little too undiluted for my tastes, and the nuclear threat never looms as
potently as it might. Dante’s young performers are as well-picked as is
customary, and Matinee is extremely
amiable, but it needed some bite.
9. The Hole
(2009)
This return, after a half decade in the
cinematic wilderness, during which Dante dabbled in TV, is a much straighter
affair than we’ve been used to, comprising a very standard horror premise
(there’s a hole in the basement, and once it’s opened dark forces are
unleashed). But Dante tells his tale with supreme technical confidence (the 3D
won an award at the Venice Film Festival) and his young cast evidence that sure
eye for naturalistic performances.
Promoted as a family horror movie (where it
was actually released; it didn’t scrape onto screens in the US until 2012),
Dante creates an effective atmosphere during the first half, as characters are
menaced by devil dolls and creepy children. Also thrown in is an effective
cameo from Bruce Dern as a previous – and current – experiencer of the house’s properties.
The narrative footing is less certain when it comes to our young hero’s
confrontation with his own unique affliction, however. Overall, though, The Hole amounts to a timely reminder
that Dante has lost none of his touch.
8. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
(2003)
A miserable movie-making experience for
Dante, with a Warner Bros that clearly didn’t understand their cartoon legacy;
they ended up dumping a picture from which they had already demanded changes to
the beginning, middle and end. Looney
Tunes is the director’s last studio picture to date, and one, for all his inability
to see the good side, that has lots to offer. Besides not being Space Jam, that is.
For a start, while it’s true it has a
frenetic pace that is very un-Dante and that, at its worst, does exactly what
he doesn’t like (full throttles us through the dry patches, knowing something
else will come along shortly), Back in
Action emerges with much of the flavour of those original shorts, and more
than that retains a sense of Dante bruised but unbowed.
The plot is as woolly as Who Framed Roger Rabbit’s, but imbued
with a strong sense of self-awareness that was integral to the originals, and
it gets its characters, most notably principles Bugs and Daffy, just right.
There are several inspired sequences, including the ‘50s B-movie cornucopia of
Area 52 and a visual tour de force through a series of paintings in the Louvre,
in which Bugs, Daffy and Elmer Fudd take on the stylistic attributes of the particular
artist.
Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman provide
surprisingly strong human support, and Timothy Dalton is far better spoofing
Bond than he ever was playing him. There are undoubtedly hiccups – Steve
Martin’s human-toon is spectacularly misjudged – but Back in Action has been unfairly maligned.
7. Small Soldiers
(1998)
Dante’s Gremlins
3, almost. After the relative box office fizzle of Gremlins 2 (compared to the original), and the generally ignored Matinee (albeit critically
well-regarded), it would be six years before he got another big screen gig, and
it came courtesy of old mucker Steven Spielberg and his newly established DreamWorks
studio. It’s fair to say this represents the dividing line between Dante’s
period of Gremlins-fuelled prolific
output and his status as an also-ran, finding it increasingly difficult to pin
down a job or blend it into a form that reflected his sensibilities.
Small
Soldiers is frequently very funny, and very
likeable, but it isn’t really breaking any moulds the director hadn’t hitherto cast.
Instead of cute pets, you have cute toys going awry and unleashing mayhem on a
small town (albeit, none of the designs here are as iconic as those for Gremlins). The corporate spectre that
can solve everything with a pay cheque is even parcelled over from the second Gremlins movie.
But this is still Dante at his best when
he’s enthused by an idea, and if the juvenile coming-of-age romance aspect is
rather weak sauce, he lets fly a salvo of delightfully effective barbs aimed at
a smattering of subjects, from all things military (“I think World War II was my favourite war” extols Phil Hartman’s
foolish neighbour), to the adulterated toy industry, to the gleefully amoral
corporate mind-set.
Indeed, in the same summer that Saving Private Ryan presented a
fashionably hellish veneration of “justified” warfare, Dante was eviscerating
the very notion through Chip Hazard’s empty, plastic platitudes. As sharp is
the Dennis Leary-headed GloboTech (“Introducing
advanced battlefield technology into consumer products for the whole family”),
which ultimately decides to approach the military with an offer on the abandoned
toy line (adding a few zeroes to the price tag), so predicting the coming age
of drone warfare.
6. Explorers
(1985)
One of the director’s most fraught
productions, Explorers cuts the rug
from under childhood dreams of untold fantastic realms by delivering aliens who
are just kids themselves. Like the protagonists (career debuts from River
Phoenix and Ethan Hawke, and the less well known but equally notable Jason
Presson), they’re devoted to a diet of TV and disobeying their parents. The
movie may end on a tentatively positive note of collective and evolving
consciousness (the noosphere), but by then the damage has been done.
Which isn’t to say Explorers isn’t ingenious, frequently very funny (the talking mice,
the drive-in Robert Picardo-starring Starkiller
movie) and delightfully designed (the cartoons-made-latex aliens, one being
Picardo again), but it’s perhaps too ambitious, and fatally undercut by a
misunderstanding studio that rushed to release what they erringly assumed would
be another Gremlins (Dante refers to
the finished picture as unfinished, a rough cut). Well, the last third of the
picture is, sort-of, another Gremlins, but it’s Gremlins 2. Which flopped.
5. The Howling
(1980)
Suffering from comparison to John Landis’
near-perfect An American Werewolf in
London (Dante at least has the vastly superior werewolves), The Howling is an often brilliant,
sometimes tonally untidy leap in the direction of the director’s most
recognised cinematic shape.
It’s a notably more sumptuous affair than Piranha, thanks to John Hora’s atmospheric
cinematography, and richer in subject matter too, with John Sayles’ screenplay
taking in Network news and self-help
satire. Dante revels in the lyncanthropic lore (to the extent of featuring character
names based on directors of werewolf movies). Where The Howling flounders, amid some wry commentary on repressed urges
and the beast within, is in its almost Sam Raimi-esque insensitivity to the
elements of rape and spousal abuse; Dee Wallace’s character is empathised with
or objectified depending on intent of the scene in question, and her dedicated
performance is often at odds with her director’s more blasé approach.
The cast includes Adam Sandler’s regular
director Dennis Dugan (as the unlikely hero of the piece), the late, great
Patrick Macnee as a doctor introducing disgruntled werewolves to a diet of
cattle, and Kevin McCarthy as a self-inflated TV news producer. Dick Miller’s
cameo is one of his best, as the proprietor of an occult book shop who insists
full moons are “A lot of Hollywood baloney”
(silver bullets are real, though). Robert Picardo (Eddie the Mangler) appears
in an atypically straight role, even given his most famously quirky line.
While Gremlins
would have its scares, they were mostly of the shock/laugh variety; it wouldn’t
be until Masters of Horror a quarter
of a century later that the director would return to full-blooded shocks. The
famously ground-breaking transformation scene isn’t a patch on American Werewolf’s, and it goes on far too
long, but credit to Dante, and Rob Bottin, for getting there first.
4. Innerspace
(1987)
The movie that sorely illustrated Dante was
no Spielberg or even Zemeckis in terms of pulling crowds. Equipped with a ‘berg
producer credit, and a no-brainer premise (Fantastic
Voyage as a comedy), audiences stayed away in droves. I was unaware of this
at the time, seeing it as just as significant a movie as the earlier Gremlins, and for the most part it
deserves to be considered in the same breath. If elements (the half-pint
miniaturisation of the villains in the third act) don’t quite come off, so much
of this does, with such unbridled enthusiasm, that it’s easily one of the best
things most of the cast have done.
That’s including Dennis Quaid, inhabiting
flawed hero Tuck Pendelton (“Zero defects”)
with panache, Meg Ryan with the cutest little overbite, and Martin Short on
hugely winning form as hypochondriac hero Jack Putter (Lewis to Quaid’s Martin;
they have great chemistry, even though they share only one scene). This is an
anomaly, on one level, the director’s only real flirtation with an adult love
story, so it’s probably fitting that it’s embedded in such unalloyed lunacy.
Eclipsing these bona fide stars, however,
is Dante main man Robert Picardo, offering scene-stealing performances as both
villain the Cowboy and Jack Putter impersonating
the Cowboy. It scarcely matters that the science of Innerspace is nonsensical (Tuck drinking alcohol comprised of
presumably larger molecules than he can absorb) when the picture as a whole is
so infectiously upbeat. Everyone here, from Kevin McCarthy’s villain Scrimshaw,
to Wendy Schaal’s would-be romantic interest for Jack, to Henry Gibson’s
strained store manager, to William Schallert’s attentive doctor, is instantly
memorable, no matter the size of the role. The effects too are richly Academy
Award-deserving (the aforementioned half-sized villains aside).
3. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
(1990)
Dante repeatedly turned down the chance to
make a Gremlins sequel, until a
desperate Warner Bros gave him carte blanche to do exactly what he wanted.
Which wasn’t terribly wise, not if they expected a hit the size of the original,
at any rate. Dante’s solution with where to take the mischievous critters next
was typically Dantean; he would deconstruct the entire edifice he had built in the
original, mocking everything from their mystifying rules (“What happens if they’re eating on an airplane and cross into a
different time zone?”) to Kate’s familial mishap (“It was Lincoln’s birthday”) in the closest he has yet come to
realising his movie world as an unfettered live action cartoon.
The whole of The New Batch is as gloriously anarchic as the titular critters
were in the original, a compendium of self-referentiality (Leonard Maltin is
attacked by Gremlins while giving the
original a bad review) and fourth-wall breaking (the projector unspools mid-film,
with Hulk Hogan coming on to demand the creatures restart it), only constrained
by the setting, Daniel Clamp’s (a winning Jon Glover) Clamp Towers (an amalgam
of Donald Trump and Ted Turner, the latter being a proponent of colourising old
movies, much to Dante’s disgust; “Casablanca,
now in full color, with a happier ending”).
The picture abounds with incidental gags (“I hope you washed your hands” urges a
men’s room tannoy) and colourful casting (Christopher Lee’s perfectly named Dr
Catheter). Best of all is Tony Randall’s disarmingly loquacious Brain Gremlin,
desirous of civilisation for his kind (“The fine points: diplomacy, compassion,
standards, manners, tradition... that's what we're reaching toward. Oh, we may
stumble along the way, but civilization, yes. The Geneva Convention, chamber
music, Susan Sontag. Everything your society has worked so hard to accomplish
over the centuries, that's what we aspire to; we want to be civilized”).
2. Gremlins
(1984)
The movie that built Dante’s commercial
reputation, nearly everything subsequently conspiring to prove it a flash in
the pan. To be honest, I vacillate over whether I prefer Gremlins or its sequel. They’re very different beasts, each
cherishable for different reasons. Gremlins
probably edges it, though, through exposing me to a filmmaker unconstrained by
standard Hollywood genres and storytelling modes. Gremlins, is, as the poster describes, cute, clever, mischievous,
intelligent, dangerous.
I well remember the anticipation I felt for
the movie, with its cute puppet, Yuletide setting and Spielberg producer
credit. I devoured the novelisation and the bubble-gum cards. And then, when I eventually
saw it, the movie itself did not disappoint. Albeit, shielded as I was from
Dantean irreverence, some of its aspects were shocking in a manner that, in
retrospect, seem sweetly naïve; the Gremlins aren’t just dangerous, they
outright kill people, including innocent people. I still find Kate’s
recollection of why she doesn’t like Christmas queasy rather than hilarious, though,
mostly because we are invested in the character; Dante said he wanted audiences
not to know whether to laugh or feel for Kate, so I guess I don’t sit on the
fence for that one.
Par for the course in Dante’s oeuvre, but
with a confidence now fully developed, Gremlins
both embraces and undercuts his favourite playground of small town
Americana, letting his scaly creatures lose on a world intentionally
referencing It’s A Wonderful Life in footage,
names and setting (Kingston Falls instead of Bedford Falls, the seasonal
setting).
The Gremlins are devilishly entertaining
little devils, and voracious examples of ‘80s consumerism, particularly when
they run riot at Dorry’s Tavern. And their leader Spike is suitably
insalubrious specimen. The picture’s set piece par excellence, however, finds
Lynn Peltzer defending her sacred home with whatever implements come to hand
(mixer, steak knife, microwave).
Gizmo is, of course, unutterably cute,
aided immeasurably by Howie Mandell’s vocals, and if Steven Spielberg is guilty
of some of the worst incidents of sentimentality the big screen has witnessed,
he’s to be celebrated for recognising the Mogwai as the hero of the piece, and thus
that he needed to appear in the entire picture rather than transform into
Stripe. Oh, and a round of applause for Jerry Goldsmith’s rocky synth score, as
iconic in it’s own way as Williams’ work for Spielberg on Indy (this was his first full feature collaboration with Dante, one
that would span nearly two decades until the composer’s death).
1. The ‘Burbs
(1989)
Not the most commercial of Dante’s movies
(see Gremlins), or the most
critically acclaimed (see Matinee),
but possibly the one whose reputation has grown most considerably since its
initial release. It’s Dante’s The Big
Lebowski, if you will, albeit the director will never be as feted as the
Coen Brothers, a movie where every line, every scene, every character, is a
contender for the best bit. The ‘Burbs
is a black comedy that, even though it embraces his penchant for the fantastic,
was Dante’s most grounded to that point, expanding his satirical tendencies regarding
all-American values into an entire movie.
Tom Hanks, back when he still did what he
did best and flexed his comedy muscles, heads a sterling cast as Ray Peterson,
wanting to slob out at home for a week but hampered by his immature neighbours
(a career best Bruce Dern – forget about Tarantino comebacks – and Rick
Ducommun) who are convinced their new neighbours the Klopeks are up to no good.
Dante was never quite satisfied with the ending,
but I don’t think their being right in their suspicions unravels the truth that
they are entirely wrong in their behaviours and attitudes (Ducommun’s
character’s TV interview essentially confirms his jubilant dim-wittedness; “Do not mess with suburbanites, because
frankly we’re just not going to take it any more”). It’s just the sort of
thing you expect from Dante anyway, the guy who makes movies where the
corporate villains pay everyone off at the end (Small Soldiers) and no one learns anything.
Hanks and Dern are probably the standouts,
the former a hive of ever-growing frustration (particularly in respect of
Ducommun’s Art “tuna neck”
Weingartner), the latter a gleefully xenophobic Nam veteran with a young trophy
wife (Wendy Schaal), unapologetic about interrogating the Klopeks (Henry
Gibson, Brother Theodore and Courtney Gains, all marvellous) and intruding on
their lives in whatever way he sees fit. Carrie Fisher perfectly pitches Ray’s
long-suffering wife, the only real adult in the movie.
Dante’s visual gags are boundless, from the
Morricone-themed cul-de-sac standoff (close-ups of actors’ faces culminate with
one of Walter’s dog, Queenie) to an Art shaped hole in a shed roof, to a “horse”
in the basement, and the classic crash zoom discovery of a human femur. The ‘Burbs is an unsung a comic
masterpiece. As Corey Feldman says at the end, “God, I love this street”; it’s one that’s endlessly revisable.
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