Starring
Matt Damon, Julianna Moore, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe, Tony Espinoza,
Glenn Flesher, Gary Basaraba, Karimah Westbrook, Leith Burke, Megan
Ferguson. Directed by George Clooney. (2017/105 min).
I
really wanted to like Suburbicon. After
all, it was originally written by the Coen Brothers, who are a
national treasure.
They
left directorial chores in the capable hands of good buddy George
Clooney, who's helmed some fine films and has always seemed in-sync
with the Coen's quirkiness. Throwing in a fine cast
headed by Matt Damon and Julianna Moore, I was excited to check this
one out, despite some scathing reviews.
So
it saddens me to say Suburbicon is a massive disappointment.
The performances are good, as is the production design depicting
an ultra-conservative, squeaky-clean, 50's-era Americana. The leaden story,
however, is disjointed and dull, not helped by heavy-handed satire
and failed attempts at black comedy.
Suburbicon
tells two concurrent stories, only one of which has an actual plot.
Damon plays Gardner Lodge, an uptight suburbanite whose invalid wife,
Rose (Moore), dies during a home robbery. Her twin sister, Margaret
(also Moore) moves in to take care of Gardner and his young son,
Nickey. But something sinister is going on at the Lodge home, and
after a visit from insurance investigator Bud Cooper (Oscar Isaac), Nicky begins to
suspect his mother's death may not have been the result of a robbery gone wrong.
 |
| Too much jelly. |
The
other story, which accounts for a third of the film's running time,
is about the Meyers, the first black family to move to Suburbicon.
They are increasingly harassed and tormented by angry white
neighbors. Mob mentality soon turns things violent and the Meyers
are helpless to do anything about it. In fact, these characters simply display silent passive resistance as the
onslaught escalates. There are no insights on racism, no resolution,
no character development. The Meyers are just symbols, the neighbors a faceless mob.
Other
than a few scenes of Nicky and the Meyers' son, Andy, playing together, at
no point do these stories intersect or converge. The tenuous
tie of these boys' friendship is all that really keeps Suburbicon
from being two completely different movies, neither of which
achieve the tone they are aiming for. Damon and Moore certainly do
their best, but the Lodge story is not-only predictable, attempts at
black humor and satire fall flat because we've seen the suburban
American Dream skewered in countless other movies. The Meyers'
segments don't even aim that high...just one ugly scene after another
of angry white men abusing their neighbors. If there was some kind of context to be found in the mindless mayhem, it was lost on me. We already knew many African-Americans were treated horribly back
then. Watching another ham-fisted example of doesn't isn't
revelatory. It's simply depressing.
Considering
the level of talent on both sides of the camera, Suburbicon
should have been a home-run (or at least an RBI double). Ultimately,
there is probably a good reason Coen Brothers, who wrote the initial
screenplay decades ago, never got around to making it themselves.
It's a distressingly scattershot collection of half-baked ideas
uncomfortably - and unconvincingly - thrown together. This one is
an unfortunate let-down.
EXTRA
KIBBLES
FEATURETTES:
"Welcome to Suburbicon"; "The Unusual Suspects:
Casting"; "Scoring Suburbicon"
AUDIO
COMMENTARY - By George Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov.
DIGITAL
COPY
KITTY CONSENSUS:
MEH.
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