[Finally I'm back to business. After a week holiday and some additional sickness I'm trying to be active again, so stay tuned.]
So, after a holiday let's start with an easy piece. At least I thought that Bob Balaban's cult movie is a perfect starter after a pause (the 'cult' isn't my definition: I found here among the top 25 cult films). "Comedy, drama, horror, mystery" - says the imdb, so it looked as a really good choice. Actually it was, but I won't tell you a secret if I express my disappointment: no, not about the film itself, but because I didn't get closer to the definition of a 'cult movie' again. Maybe it's my mistake (in the next months I'll go after this question really hard), forget it now for some weeks, and instead of some speculative theoretical explanations, focus on the film!
"Michael, the cellar is dark, your room is dark, everything is dark."
This time we have a normal family. Normal according to the standard way of living in the end of the fifties in some typical-terrible suburbs of the USA. An average middle aged mother with redred nails and already grandma haircut, then a fatface sweaty father with white socks and yellow cardigan (who call his son "sport":), and their son, Michael, a scared small guy, haunted with nightmares, who just doesn't fit to the narrow-shallow, idiot, I mean average 'family'. Or they are overly different? At least they have a real strange rule: eating meat all the time, for example every day for breakfast a fist-sized liver. For a weightlifter must be yummie, but for a 8-10 years old child it's even scary.
Michael's nightmares (shown surprisingly good in the film) are real? Or has he a bit more vivid imagination? The susburbs' fake Elvis-like happy-songs mixed with Angelo Badalamenti's sinister noise music plays with these double opportunities very well. At the end, you'll get all the answers - and you'll like it I promise. If you liked the Twilight Zone or the Tales of the Unexpected series, it's something for you.
What I really liked in this film is the following: At first sight it seems that everything is overacted, especially the parents' roles. All their adult gestures seems to be forced and that's why sometimes grotesque. But if you accept that the whole film is shown through Michael's child-point-of-view [the choosen picture is very common in the film],
then sooner or later you'll realize that the whole theatrically overdone acting serves the aim to give you back those feelings what you felt when you've been a child. When all the adult things were strange, incomprehensible, and not only sometimes scary.
Balaban's movie brings back you in time when you've been afraid of the monsters under you bed and ghosts in the closet. When you could think that everybody is an alien around you who is playing a role in some terrible experiment (as a child I had this idea at least:), when The Stepford Wives were more a scary option for you than a sociologically motivated distopia.
I would say watch it, but for vegetarians I wouldn't recommend.
7/10
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