Film Review - Suburbicon (15)

Nicky, you need to get up. There are men in the house.

Suburbicon is a curious beast - a midnight-black satire located in 1950s Anywhere, USA, where the central storyline of murder and deceit is plopped right in the middle of great big bizarre racial metaphor. With a script originally from the Coen Brothers reworked and directed by George Clooney, it sounds like it should be one of the year's stand-outs. And no it's not without its pleasures, in fact it's got heapings of nasty fun courtesy of a great cast. But this movie falls some way short of the greatness that might have been expected.

The 'Suburbicon' in question is an immaculately green-lawned community of the type that tempted upwardly-mobile white folk in post-War America. It's picture-perfect and all glassy smiles, until the first non-white family moves in and the smiles turn sour. (Yes - all the social satire is as in your face as the title suggests.) 

Oblivious to the rising racial tensions is Gardner Lodge - a supremely uptight Matt Damon - whose family life with his wheelchair-bound wife and her sister (Julianne Moore in dual roles) is shattered by a home invasion. Viewed chiefly through the eyes of his young son Nicky, the events that follow are thick with lies and conspiracy and dark family secrets. The Lodges' descent into craziness is mirrored by the community breakdown that surrounds them, as suburban utopia tips all the way into dystopian hell. 

The best aspect of Suburbicon is its grotesque parody of '50s middle-class life within the Lodge household. Moore is genuinely creepy in her sister-in-law Margaret role, a glacial grin belying scary depths of malevolence. Meanwhile Damon's facade as the capable head of house threatens to come apart along with his prescription-issue glasses, as his life-choices start to rebound. And Star Wars' Oscar Isaac is a delight as the insidiously charming insurance investigator who comes calling. 

All of this is thrown into relief too by the innocence of the Lodges' son Nicky - a convincing and touching turn by young Noah Jupe.

Writers Joel and Ethan Coen have mined this era - Cadillacs, bouffant hair-dos and apple pie - for comedy before, but never to such grotesque effect. Director Clooney (a long-time Coen collaborator) draws much on their style too, caricaturing virtually every lead and bit-player as comically, unnervingly fake. It's darkly then viciously funny, even if the social commentary is as blunt as a wielded baseball-bat.

And that's the overall problem with the film. Its ideas are simply too big and bold, its satire too heavy-handed, particularly its method of dealing with the race issue. Respectable people have secrets, middle-class utopias fester with bigotry... All true, and all points that bear restating. But it's been dealt with better, and it's been done better this year. Click here and you'll see what I mean.

Gut Reaction: Quite a lot of laughs, mainly at the sheer weight of indignity heaped on Matt Damon. And a sense of peril on behalf on one character.

Ed's Verdict: Nothing from Mr Clooney and the Coens could ever be totally lacking in pleasures and this its share of grim fun. But it's much too obvious to deliver the satirical punch it's aiming.