There was a time in the 1980s when Joe Dante, who directed this film, was almost as hot as Spielberg and Zemeckis. He worked with Spielberg on his most successful films, the Gremlins films. This little film, which looks like it was shot entirely on leftover street sets on the Universal lot, came out of that period. Tom Hanks was still mostly known as a comedian (thank the heavens!), and it was still a time when Corey Felman being in the movie was a sign of hipness. For younger viewers who missed this time, the movie must be a time capsule. I remember seeing it in the theater and enjoying it a lot, and while it hasn't really held up necessarily as one of the best comedies of its era at the very least it offers some fun performances and a neat ironic perspective on suburbia.
Hanks plays the suburban everyman, Ray Peterson, whose wife Carol (Carrie Fisher) wants him to relax and enjoy his vacation but whose best friends in the neighborhood (Bruce Dern and Rick Docummun) want him to take part in their juvenile spying games. When it starts to look more and more like their strange Eastern European neighbors might actually be serial killers or something of the sort, Ray and his friends go to extreme measures to try to infiltrate the spooky house.
Rick Docummun is a bit annoying for the amount of screen time he gets here, but Bruce Dern is the best thing about the movie. He plays a paranoid 'Nam veteran with a trophy wife (Wendy Schaal) and an overdose of tenacity. Fisher and Hanks are good as the central couple as well. Feldman is awfully irritating in this movie because Dante chooses to let him basically narrate to the camera as if he were Frankie Avalon or Ferris Bueller. The brilliant comic actor Brother Theodore and notable character actor Henry Gibson are wonderful as the bizarre Klopeks. Dante/Corman regular Dick Miller shows up in a funny bit as a conservative garbage collector paired with a hippy type partner (Robert Picardo) who insists that the customers have the right to look at their neighbors' trash. I would have liked to see a whole movie just about Picardo and Miller.
The unfortunate thing about the film is that it promises a lot more than it delivers. The first 20 or 30 minutes are great, with setting up the fun characters and the goofy situation. But by the end everything is a bit forced. There's no reason for Dr. Klopek to betray himself so obviously, it seems like it was just done to wrap the film up on a sort of "Twilight Zone" vibe that doesn't fit the tone of the film. It could have been a smarter movie if Hanks' character and his friends truly were delusional. But for whatever this movie is, I'll take it. It's pretty much the last movie that I thought Hanks was funny in (no, not "Joe Versus the Volcano" no thank you). It was great to see Carrie Fisher in the movie after she hadn't been on screen in any movies I'd seen in a few years, and it's still fun to see her in this kind of domestic housewife situation. She could always add a funny moment or two to a comedy, as she did in "Austin Powers" as well. The early parts of the movie though seem to promise something like Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands", a smart dark comedy on suburban absurdity, but the film doesn't really follow through.
Hanks plays the suburban everyman, Ray Peterson, whose wife Carol (Carrie Fisher) wants him to relax and enjoy his vacation but whose best friends in the neighborhood (Bruce Dern and Rick Docummun) want him to take part in their juvenile spying games. When it starts to look more and more like their strange Eastern European neighbors might actually be serial killers or something of the sort, Ray and his friends go to extreme measures to try to infiltrate the spooky house.
Rick Docummun is a bit annoying for the amount of screen time he gets here, but Bruce Dern is the best thing about the movie. He plays a paranoid 'Nam veteran with a trophy wife (Wendy Schaal) and an overdose of tenacity. Fisher and Hanks are good as the central couple as well. Feldman is awfully irritating in this movie because Dante chooses to let him basically narrate to the camera as if he were Frankie Avalon or Ferris Bueller. The brilliant comic actor Brother Theodore and notable character actor Henry Gibson are wonderful as the bizarre Klopeks. Dante/Corman regular Dick Miller shows up in a funny bit as a conservative garbage collector paired with a hippy type partner (Robert Picardo) who insists that the customers have the right to look at their neighbors' trash. I would have liked to see a whole movie just about Picardo and Miller.
The unfortunate thing about the film is that it promises a lot more than it delivers. The first 20 or 30 minutes are great, with setting up the fun characters and the goofy situation. But by the end everything is a bit forced. There's no reason for Dr. Klopek to betray himself so obviously, it seems like it was just done to wrap the film up on a sort of "Twilight Zone" vibe that doesn't fit the tone of the film. It could have been a smarter movie if Hanks' character and his friends truly were delusional. But for whatever this movie is, I'll take it. It's pretty much the last movie that I thought Hanks was funny in (no, not "Joe Versus the Volcano" no thank you). It was great to see Carrie Fisher in the movie after she hadn't been on screen in any movies I'd seen in a few years, and it's still fun to see her in this kind of domestic housewife situation. She could always add a funny moment or two to a comedy, as she did in "Austin Powers" as well. The early parts of the movie though seem to promise something like Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands", a smart dark comedy on suburban absurdity, but the film doesn't really follow through.