Someone should probably tell George Clooney to stop.
It was easy to give director George Clooney the benefit of the doubt for a while. People mostly liked Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Good Night, and Good Luck turned out to be a pretty big critical and commercial success. Leatherheads was a strange little detour, but enough viewers enjoyed The Ides of March to keep it from being a flop. And then things went downhill. The Monuments Men seemed to be Clooney's return to Oscar-worthy territory, but it ended up being a shockingly disjointed and dull misfire. When the obvious awards-bait flick was pushed to February, everyone knew it was a bad sign, but I don't think anybody truly knew how bad that movie would be. On paper, Suburbicon seemed like a good bounce-back movie for Clooney. A script by Joel and Ethan Coen, a cast led by the trifecta of Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac, and razor-sharp satirical subject matter- sounds like a home run, right?
The extent to which Suburbicon fails to execute even its most basic premises is genuinely shocking. This is essentially an old-school noir mixed with an utterly worthless commentary on modern race relations in America, and while some pieces work well on their own (literally anything with Oscar Isaac), the movie is a baffling, dumbfounding mess. Why Clooney felt that this pitch-black satire needed such an ill-conceived subplot is beyond me, and judging by the response from audiences and critics (30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a dreadful "D-" CinemaScore), everyone else is as perplexed as I am. On every single level, this thing is a mess. The characters are so thinly written, the plot is so poorly executed, and the tone is so scattered that I stared at the screen in utter disbelief. As I sat alone in an empty 11:30 AM screening of Clooney's latest flop, there were times where I audibly groaned or said "Oh god, no, don't do that." This is a movie full of horrible choices, and the final product is a grisly, dreadfully dull mess.
The town of Suburbicon is basically what it sounds- your ideal 1950s suburban utopia. Everybody's happy, and the town lives in its own little delightful bubble. That bubble is burst for the backwards-thinking citizens of Suburbicon when the Mayers family shows up, throwing the town into a tizzy over the arrival of African-American residents. Young Nicky Lodge (Noah Jupe, one of the lone highlights of this disaster) plays baseball with the family's young boy, resulting in a series of dirty looks from their racist neighbors. Later that night, two hot-headed dolts (Glenn Fleshler and Alex Hassell) break into the Lodge household, tying up the whole family and physically threatening them. Gardner (Matt Damon), Nicky, and Aunt Margaret (Julianne Moore in a double role) all survive, but Rose (Moore again), Nicky's mother, is left dead.
Gardner and Nicky are devastated, and because of this, Margaret agrees to stay with the family for a while. But the murder of Rose is only the beginning of Suburbicon's problems. The race issue isn't going away, and the riots outside the house of the town's latest residents only grow in intensity. And quite simply, the trouble isn't over for Gardner Lodge either. With the two mobsters still threatening to damage the family, everyone involved is forced to dodge danger at every turn. Throw in Bud Cooper (Oscar Isaac), a shady and threatening insurance salesman, and it doesn't look like things will end well for the Lodge family.
I really don't know where to start with this one. I guess I'll start with the positives, simply because they're few and far between in this film. I'm not the first person to say this, but Oscar Isaac is great here, and he brings a much-needed jolt of life just as the film reaches its lowest point. I still think his character is vastly underwritten, but he's able to sell the snappy dialogue with the kind of charismatic menace that only he can conjure up. His scenes are pretty enjoyable, but you just can't help but wish that they were in a better film. Noah Jupe is a standout as the young boy, and Matt Damon also isn't bad. I was pleasantly surprised by a twist that occurs right at the start of the third act- when Suburbicon plunges into the darkness, it's surprisingly fun to watch. You can feel the shades of what it could have been in the hands of a more competent filmmaker. But Clooney clearly thinks this film is smarter than it actually is, and whatever he and Grant Heslov added to the script completely sinks the movie.
Basically, you have four movies shoved into one- a shockingly straight-faced suburban drama, a "blistering" critique of American race relations, an old-fashioned noir movie, and a pitch-black comedy. But most of these elements just don't work, and the result is a film of bizarre inconsistencies and needless detours. As a comedy, it isn't funny, and as a drama, it's straight-up cringe-worthy. But perhaps worst of all is the injection of racial politics into a very dark and nasty crime story. The story of the Mayers family's arrival in Suburbicon is literally a red herring- it's a distraction from what's really going on with the Lodge family. Once Clooney pulls the rug out from under the audience, the story of the Mayers family no longer serves any purpose. As the film reaches its climax, Clooney cuts between the violent happenings at the Lodge house and the intense riot at the Meyers residency, a parallel that makes absolutely no sense at all. I know Clooney wanted to make an angry movie that reflected the times we live in, but the way in which he splices together these two radically different stories is staggeringly inept.
By trying to do so much, Clooney causes the movie to self-destruct. Even with material that is somewhat fascinating in its vicious nature, he has sucked the life out of the film. When you're making a film about shady characters and evil deeds, it's crucial that they have some kind of actual motivation. Without delving into spoiler territory, nothing that these characters do is based in any kind of tangible motivation. The result is a plot that goes absolutely nowhere, punctuated by an ending that is so on-the-nose that I felt my soul die a little. Suburbicon is massively dull, hopelessly stupid, and thematically vapid, an excuse for Clooney to pretend he's saying something profound without really saying anything at all. Anything interesting that happens in this film is obliterated by the sheer tedium and messiness of the proceedings.
Suburbicon is just plain bad, and it's especially painful because there's no justifiable reason for it to be this awful. The design elements aren't half-bad, the score by Alexandre Desplat is pretty good, and there are even a few decent performances sprinkled throughout this catastrophe. But through incredibly misguided directing choices and a seriously distracting lack of focus, Clooney practically ensures that this project's failure. If they had stuck to making a terrifying, chilling noir, maybe this ends up being watchable. But in its current state, Suburbicon is a movie that tries to do too much while saying too little, and the result is a flat, disposable hodgepodge of genres and ideas that comes and goes without leaving so much as a scratch. For a supposedly topical and biting satire of American values, Suburbicon is surprisingly toothless, a strangely sentimental, inconsistent disappointment.
THE FINAL GRADE: D+ (4.6/10)
Images: Paramount/IMDB
It was easy to give director George Clooney the benefit of the doubt for a while. People mostly liked Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Good Night, and Good Luck turned out to be a pretty big critical and commercial success. Leatherheads was a strange little detour, but enough viewers enjoyed The Ides of March to keep it from being a flop. And then things went downhill. The Monuments Men seemed to be Clooney's return to Oscar-worthy territory, but it ended up being a shockingly disjointed and dull misfire. When the obvious awards-bait flick was pushed to February, everyone knew it was a bad sign, but I don't think anybody truly knew how bad that movie would be. On paper, Suburbicon seemed like a good bounce-back movie for Clooney. A script by Joel and Ethan Coen, a cast led by the trifecta of Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac, and razor-sharp satirical subject matter- sounds like a home run, right?
The extent to which Suburbicon fails to execute even its most basic premises is genuinely shocking. This is essentially an old-school noir mixed with an utterly worthless commentary on modern race relations in America, and while some pieces work well on their own (literally anything with Oscar Isaac), the movie is a baffling, dumbfounding mess. Why Clooney felt that this pitch-black satire needed such an ill-conceived subplot is beyond me, and judging by the response from audiences and critics (30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a dreadful "D-" CinemaScore), everyone else is as perplexed as I am. On every single level, this thing is a mess. The characters are so thinly written, the plot is so poorly executed, and the tone is so scattered that I stared at the screen in utter disbelief. As I sat alone in an empty 11:30 AM screening of Clooney's latest flop, there were times where I audibly groaned or said "Oh god, no, don't do that." This is a movie full of horrible choices, and the final product is a grisly, dreadfully dull mess.
The town of Suburbicon is basically what it sounds- your ideal 1950s suburban utopia. Everybody's happy, and the town lives in its own little delightful bubble. That bubble is burst for the backwards-thinking citizens of Suburbicon when the Mayers family shows up, throwing the town into a tizzy over the arrival of African-American residents. Young Nicky Lodge (Noah Jupe, one of the lone highlights of this disaster) plays baseball with the family's young boy, resulting in a series of dirty looks from their racist neighbors. Later that night, two hot-headed dolts (Glenn Fleshler and Alex Hassell) break into the Lodge household, tying up the whole family and physically threatening them. Gardner (Matt Damon), Nicky, and Aunt Margaret (Julianne Moore in a double role) all survive, but Rose (Moore again), Nicky's mother, is left dead.
Gardner and Nicky are devastated, and because of this, Margaret agrees to stay with the family for a while. But the murder of Rose is only the beginning of Suburbicon's problems. The race issue isn't going away, and the riots outside the house of the town's latest residents only grow in intensity. And quite simply, the trouble isn't over for Gardner Lodge either. With the two mobsters still threatening to damage the family, everyone involved is forced to dodge danger at every turn. Throw in Bud Cooper (Oscar Isaac), a shady and threatening insurance salesman, and it doesn't look like things will end well for the Lodge family.
I really don't know where to start with this one. I guess I'll start with the positives, simply because they're few and far between in this film. I'm not the first person to say this, but Oscar Isaac is great here, and he brings a much-needed jolt of life just as the film reaches its lowest point. I still think his character is vastly underwritten, but he's able to sell the snappy dialogue with the kind of charismatic menace that only he can conjure up. His scenes are pretty enjoyable, but you just can't help but wish that they were in a better film. Noah Jupe is a standout as the young boy, and Matt Damon also isn't bad. I was pleasantly surprised by a twist that occurs right at the start of the third act- when Suburbicon plunges into the darkness, it's surprisingly fun to watch. You can feel the shades of what it could have been in the hands of a more competent filmmaker. But Clooney clearly thinks this film is smarter than it actually is, and whatever he and Grant Heslov added to the script completely sinks the movie.
Basically, you have four movies shoved into one- a shockingly straight-faced suburban drama, a "blistering" critique of American race relations, an old-fashioned noir movie, and a pitch-black comedy. But most of these elements just don't work, and the result is a film of bizarre inconsistencies and needless detours. As a comedy, it isn't funny, and as a drama, it's straight-up cringe-worthy. But perhaps worst of all is the injection of racial politics into a very dark and nasty crime story. The story of the Mayers family's arrival in Suburbicon is literally a red herring- it's a distraction from what's really going on with the Lodge family. Once Clooney pulls the rug out from under the audience, the story of the Mayers family no longer serves any purpose. As the film reaches its climax, Clooney cuts between the violent happenings at the Lodge house and the intense riot at the Meyers residency, a parallel that makes absolutely no sense at all. I know Clooney wanted to make an angry movie that reflected the times we live in, but the way in which he splices together these two radically different stories is staggeringly inept.
By trying to do so much, Clooney causes the movie to self-destruct. Even with material that is somewhat fascinating in its vicious nature, he has sucked the life out of the film. When you're making a film about shady characters and evil deeds, it's crucial that they have some kind of actual motivation. Without delving into spoiler territory, nothing that these characters do is based in any kind of tangible motivation. The result is a plot that goes absolutely nowhere, punctuated by an ending that is so on-the-nose that I felt my soul die a little. Suburbicon is massively dull, hopelessly stupid, and thematically vapid, an excuse for Clooney to pretend he's saying something profound without really saying anything at all. Anything interesting that happens in this film is obliterated by the sheer tedium and messiness of the proceedings.
Suburbicon is just plain bad, and it's especially painful because there's no justifiable reason for it to be this awful. The design elements aren't half-bad, the score by Alexandre Desplat is pretty good, and there are even a few decent performances sprinkled throughout this catastrophe. But through incredibly misguided directing choices and a seriously distracting lack of focus, Clooney practically ensures that this project's failure. If they had stuck to making a terrifying, chilling noir, maybe this ends up being watchable. But in its current state, Suburbicon is a movie that tries to do too much while saying too little, and the result is a flat, disposable hodgepodge of genres and ideas that comes and goes without leaving so much as a scratch. For a supposedly topical and biting satire of American values, Suburbicon is surprisingly toothless, a strangely sentimental, inconsistent disappointment.
THE FINAL GRADE: D+ (4.6/10)
Images: Paramount/IMDB
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