The ‘Burbs

A fairly disappointing flop, The ‘Burbs follows Tom Hanks’ Ray Peterson as he and a neighbor (Rick Ducommun’s Art Weingartner) become convinced that there’s something shady going on with the new inhabitants on their pleasant cul-de-sac – which eventually prompts the men, along with Bruce Dern’s Mark Rumsfield, to launch an investigation into the happenings within the creepy old house. It’s a somewhat promising setup that’s employed to progressively underwhelming effect by filmmaker Joe Dante, as the movie slowly-but-surely adopts a repetitive vibe that grows more and more tedious as the thin storyline unfolds – with the bulk of The ‘Burbs‘ plodding midsection devoted to Ray and company’s attempts at discerning the truth about their recently-arrived neighbors. The problem is, however, that exceedingly little of this is actually interesting; Dante, along with scripter Dana Olsen, delivers an episodic narrative that’s rife with less-than-engrossing set-pieces and interludes, with the half-baked atmosphere compounded by an almost total lack of laughs and an incongruously flat Hanks performance. (The actor, for the most part, seems bored and uninvested, although he does manage to elevate a few routine sequences – including a high-water-mark moment in which he reluctantly eats a sardine atop a pretzel.) The over-the-top climactic stretch does the movie absolutely no favors, and it is, in the end, impossible to label The ‘Burbs as anything other than a sporadically affable yet primarily tiresome misfire.

** out of ****