One star. Rated R, for violence, profanity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang
Bad movies prompt all manner of
conversational snorts and giggles, while heading home and often well into the
following day.
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| Gardner (Matt Damon) and his sister-in-law, Margaret (Julianne Moore), react in stunned silence to the newest ludicrous indignity inflicted upon their family. |
Really bad movies leave us in stunned silence,
unable to process the why and how such a travesty could have survived the
lengthy vetting process that must be endured by all major studio productions.
This is a really bad movie.
The Coen brothers have hit both
extremes during a long and productive career, and of late they’ve been getting
sloppier; A Serious Man, Hail, Caesar! and their misguided 2012
remake of Gambit are a far cry from Fargo and No Country for Old Men.
Suburbicon may be their worst stinker yet.
As a satire — and I admit, that’s
speculation — this film’s message is too garbled, sloppy and tasteless. But
it’s far too weird, random and exaggerated to be taken seriously, with almost
every character an overblown burlesque. They may as well be wearing clown
suits.
Co-scripters George Clooney (who
also directs) and Grant Heslov appear to have been inspired by the post-WWII,
postcard-perfect Levittown suburban communities: the sort of cheerful towns
characterized in TV shows such as Father
Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver.
What’s often lost to history is the fact that Federal House Administration
lenders restricted housing rental and sales agreements, in all Levittown
developments, to (and I quote) “the Caucasian race.”
That issue came to boil in August
1957, when William and Daisy Myers moved their family into a section of
Pennsylvania’s Levittown community, becoming the first African-Americans in the
all-white enclave. The nasty results were captured by filmmakers Lee Bobker and
Lester Becker in a documentary titled Crisis
in Levittown, Pa., which remains
jaw-dropping, cringe-worthy viewing (and is readily available online).
So: Part of Cooney’s film, set in
the late 1950s in a Norman Rockwellian, Levittown-esque community, depicts —
with impressive authenticity to actual events — what occurs during the first
few weeks after an African-American family moves into a home that shares a back
fence with the house belonging to Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon), his wife Rose
(Julianne Moore) and their adolescent son Nicky (Noah Jupe).
The problem is that this concept
has been married — by shotgun — to a shelved Coen brothers script called Suburbicon, populated by the usual Coen
misanthropes and overwhelmed “regular folks” with poor judgment, and a proclivity
for ill-advised decisions.
It’s not a good fit.
