Storyline
When secretive new neighbors move in next door, suburbanite Ray Peterson and his friends let their paranoia get the best of them as they start to suspect the newcomers of evildoings and commence an investigation. But it's hardly how Ray, who much prefers drinking beer, reading his newspaper and watching a ball game on the tube expected to spend his vacation.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Nicky Katt, Rance Howard, Carrie Fisher, Kevin Gage, Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Dick Miller, Rick Ducommun, Corey Feldman, Sonny Carl Davis, Robert Picardo, Henry Gibson, Wendy Schaal, Brother Theodore, Courtney Gains, Gale Gordon, Cory Danziger, Franklyn Ajaye, Heather Haase, Billy Stevenson, Gary Hays, Dana Olsen, Brenda Benner, Patrika Darbo, Kevin McCarthy
Trailer
Reviews
88
Though The burbs is hardly an actor's film, Hanks continues to demonstrate the ease and maturity that has been his since Big, while Dern, Ducommun and Feldman lend broad but effective support.
80
One of Tom Hanks' overlooked performances because this bizarre thriller-comedy ends so strangely but there's much to like here.
80
CineVue
Skillfully mixing elements of horror while never alienating its core PG demographic, The 'Burbs also benefits from a wonderfully playful score by the late great Jerry Goldsmith. While the film bottles it slightly at the end with the obvious, neatly-tied-together resolution which would have benefited from maintaining an ambiguity, the enormous sense of fun established by Dante and his cast in the run-up more than makes up for any shortcomings.
75
The 'Burbs offers a delightfully complicated portrait of suburban voyeurism, a portrait taken to its absurd extreme by Dante's introduction of foreign elements among his xenophobic characters, in a devastating satire of suburban values.
70
Director Joe Dante funnels his decidedly cracked view of suburban life through dark humour in The ‘Burbs. Hanks does a fine impersonation of a regular guy on the verge of a nervous breakdown, while Dern adds another memorable psychotic to his resume.
