For some time I kept wondering how come a movie with a good casting and four good writers failed to get an audience and attract critics but after seeing it's no
wonder. "Suburbicon" fails in all possible ways. It's mixture of social commentary of the late 1950's along with a dramatic tense thriller tries too many things at once and it
doesn't succeed in anything. Mostly it was a movie that didn't need to be made, it's that pointless and almost absurd, if it wasn't for the fact that one of the themes worked
was inspired by an actual fact - the racial tension when a prominent black family moved to a white suburb (check out "Crisis in Levittown, PA"). But there's no urgency neither
interesting in such a fictional version of those events.
So you have the exact forementioned story but it's actually something in the background since the main events happen with the next door neighbor, an apparent happy family of father (Matt Damon), wife and her sister (both played by Julianne Moore) and the son (Noah Jupe). One night, they're attacked by two mysterious guys and the invalid sister end up dying. For a moment I thought the story would connect this event with the black family, maybe the people opposed to them would fabricate a crime and pin on them and the main reason for the Damon family inclusion would be that the son befriended the black kid. However, the movie moves further ahead with a complicated plot where we find out that this perfect family who lives the American dream isn't so perfect and they conduct shady businesses with dangerous people.
To make things clearer and shorter: it's a mess of a movie where you don't connect with any of those characters, neither for the harrassed black family since they are put so much in the background and it's the usual racist modus operandi thrown against them (just the mother actually; the father is absent for plenty of time and the kid manages to have a friendship with Damon's boy) that there's no time and space to actually know them and understand why in the world they wanted to move to such a place when despite some evolution when it came to racial terms segregation was still a predominant thing. And as for the other family, they're so cold, bland and lacking in substance that we wonder what's the point in caring for them. We follow the tragedy in curiosity but the more dangerous things and threats comes their way the more ridiculous the story looks.
If there is a word more powerful than disappointed than that's the word I needed to use to define this film. Written by Joel & Ethan Coen, George Clooney (also director) and Grant Heslov, four talented minds and eight skilfull hands yet they came with this wreck of a movie that wasted their talents and of others. My idea was that Clooney and Heslov (writing partners in the brilliant "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "The Ides of March") wrote the social commentary part of the film while the Coens dealt with the suspense, then they joined forces to make a movie that on the deeper level actually had something valuable to say about society and the preconceived notion of appearances and how they affect our perception of reality (the black family is seen as troublemakers and needs to be evicted from the neighborhood and the white family goes above suspicion even though there's violence and crimes happening all around). I understood what they did, I can accept what was proposed in those elevated terms but that doesn't mean they created a good film. It may teach some lesson, some moral but it's too empty, another cliche about life in the suburbs, and it doesn't entertain one bit because it's too lifeless.
I don't have words to describe the acting, all I can say is that Damon is very unusual, unsympathetic and Moore struggles with those two characters; Jupe is a fine young actor...in other movies; Gary Basabara as the uncle was a fun treat. Main and only reason why I'm not trashing this movie so hard is due to the presence of Oscar Isaac as a mysterious insurance investigator, where he injects some odd humor into the family situation by getting suspicious about the woman's murder. You can attest the Coens brilliancy once again with the use of dark humor and intelligent dialogues - but it's just when he's there; two or three suspenseful sequences are also worthy of praise but they're not strong enough to convince audiences to see this.
Trust me on this, you will get very disapppointed, possibly angry with this movie because there might have been a way this could be salvaged or at least better conceived.
Either it could be just Clooney/Heslov idea alone and we'd have a dramatic real life story or just then Coens making their humored thriller, but the union of this quarter simply could not be. Why, George, why? You were on such a good stream of quality films as director and then...bump. 3/10.
So you have the exact forementioned story but it's actually something in the background since the main events happen with the next door neighbor, an apparent happy family of father (Matt Damon), wife and her sister (both played by Julianne Moore) and the son (Noah Jupe). One night, they're attacked by two mysterious guys and the invalid sister end up dying. For a moment I thought the story would connect this event with the black family, maybe the people opposed to them would fabricate a crime and pin on them and the main reason for the Damon family inclusion would be that the son befriended the black kid. However, the movie moves further ahead with a complicated plot where we find out that this perfect family who lives the American dream isn't so perfect and they conduct shady businesses with dangerous people.
To make things clearer and shorter: it's a mess of a movie where you don't connect with any of those characters, neither for the harrassed black family since they are put so much in the background and it's the usual racist modus operandi thrown against them (just the mother actually; the father is absent for plenty of time and the kid manages to have a friendship with Damon's boy) that there's no time and space to actually know them and understand why in the world they wanted to move to such a place when despite some evolution when it came to racial terms segregation was still a predominant thing. And as for the other family, they're so cold, bland and lacking in substance that we wonder what's the point in caring for them. We follow the tragedy in curiosity but the more dangerous things and threats comes their way the more ridiculous the story looks.
If there is a word more powerful than disappointed than that's the word I needed to use to define this film. Written by Joel & Ethan Coen, George Clooney (also director) and Grant Heslov, four talented minds and eight skilfull hands yet they came with this wreck of a movie that wasted their talents and of others. My idea was that Clooney and Heslov (writing partners in the brilliant "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "The Ides of March") wrote the social commentary part of the film while the Coens dealt with the suspense, then they joined forces to make a movie that on the deeper level actually had something valuable to say about society and the preconceived notion of appearances and how they affect our perception of reality (the black family is seen as troublemakers and needs to be evicted from the neighborhood and the white family goes above suspicion even though there's violence and crimes happening all around). I understood what they did, I can accept what was proposed in those elevated terms but that doesn't mean they created a good film. It may teach some lesson, some moral but it's too empty, another cliche about life in the suburbs, and it doesn't entertain one bit because it's too lifeless.
I don't have words to describe the acting, all I can say is that Damon is very unusual, unsympathetic and Moore struggles with those two characters; Jupe is a fine young actor...in other movies; Gary Basabara as the uncle was a fun treat. Main and only reason why I'm not trashing this movie so hard is due to the presence of Oscar Isaac as a mysterious insurance investigator, where he injects some odd humor into the family situation by getting suspicious about the woman's murder. You can attest the Coens brilliancy once again with the use of dark humor and intelligent dialogues - but it's just when he's there; two or three suspenseful sequences are also worthy of praise but they're not strong enough to convince audiences to see this.
Trust me on this, you will get very disapppointed, possibly angry with this movie because there might have been a way this could be salvaged or at least better conceived.
Either it could be just Clooney/Heslov idea alone and we'd have a dramatic real life story or just then Coens making their humored thriller, but the union of this quarter simply could not be. Why, George, why? You were on such a good stream of quality films as director and then...bump. 3/10.