Ray took a free week off from work and intends to spend it "being lazy" at his suburban home, despite the nagging of his wife Carol who wants to spend it going somewhere with their kid. Ray is however preocuppied by his new mysterious neighbors the Klopeks who never go out during the day from their house, and are only seen during the night. Together with other neighbors, war veteran Rumsfield and the chubby Art, Ray decides to break into the house of the Klopeks while they are away for the night, but they accidentally cause a gas leak and an explosion of said house. The Klopeks arrive with the police to press charges. However, in the ambulance van, Werner Klopek wants to kill Ray because he fears he might have seen skulls in the house. The police find human bones in Klopek's car, realizing they have been killing the owners and taking over their houses.
Before Tom Hanks gave up on being a comedian to turn exclusively towards dramatic roles, he starred in several comedies where he proved to have a fine sense for comic timing, and one of his better editions was the cult black comedy about suspicious neighbors, "The Burbs", which still feel surprisingly fresh at moments. The director Joe Dante narrows the entire plot down to only one location, the suburban neighborhood, yet some situations simply have style, weird creativity and aesthetic cinematography by Robert M. Stevens, evident already in the opening scene where the Universal logo transforms into Earth, as the camera slowly descends "down" to a street in the US from space. The first 40 minutes are the best, abounding with snappy jokes: a delivery boy on a bicycle throws a newspaper which hits Ray in the stomach at his back yard, so the angry Ray just throws his coffee from his cup at the kid. Another outstandingly funny moment includes Ray and the neighbors breaking in into the house of their missing neighbor, Walter, as Rumsfield's wife suddenly screams in the kitchen because she thinks she sees a rat on the stove, but then Rumsfield picks the "furry" thing up: "Honey, it's not a rat. It's Walter's toupee." Later on, as Art holds a plate with food in front of himself, a kid randomly opens the kitchen door and breaks the plate with it. Unfortunately, the "neighbors are satanists" subplot is rather too extreme and radical for a comedy, which feels rather uneven, whereas the sole villains, the Klopeks, are shown too little in the story and feel underused, just as Carrie Fisher's thin role of Ray's wife. Nontheless, "The Burbs" have enough of suprises and ideas to be fun even today.
Grade:++
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