The Suburbans

When watching this film, it seems to have a big identity crisis throughout. It has all the right components to be a hilarious comedy, but doesn't deliver when it should; often merging into boring drama and romance side plots for long periods of time. After seeing the powerful cast consisting of Ferrell, Hewitt, and Stiller, it's easy to build up high expectations. Here's my analysis of that: Will Ferrell's presence in this film is so insignificant that he shouldn't even have been in the movie at all. He was already pretty big, so I don't get why he was in such a menial role and literally has about 3 light chuckle lines in the whole film.

Stiller has a menial role as well, but his character is funny and one of the higher points of the movie. Jennifer Love Hewitt does a good job with the decent-bad material presented to her, and she gets a lot of screen time. Her character is cute and one of the better aspects of the film.

There are some notably funny elements here and there, but nothing that grabs you as a whole.

It's a strange mix of broad satire and angsty romantic comedy.

The satire is hilarious. Ben and Jerry Stiller are wonderful as a father/son team of record company execs. Jennifer Love Hewitt is equally wonderful as long as she stays on the satire side of the line; when the script shoves her over onto the romantic comedy side, she never quite recovers her balance. She has to play two completely different characters; she can't be blamed if it doesn't quite work.

Amy Brenneman, stuck on the romantic comedy side, does her formidable best to make her character work. In fact, she is by far the most sympathetic and memorable character in the movie.

Definitely worth a rental.

there are just some things Long Islanders love: good pizza/bagels, mafia movies, the beach, and hearing shout-outs to towns and landmarks on our beloved home. Goodfellas takes care of the mafia movies and the shout-outs, and the Suburbans basically use the latter to keep me watching the sorry piece of film. I was practically jumping out of my seat when they said "sunrise mall" and the house that was in Wantagh... so all that being said, that was the only part of the movie that was in any way enticing or watchable. And Will Ferrell was pretty funny, but definitely needed to be featured better. Forget this movie. Oh wait, you've never heard of it and never will....for God's sake im only watching it cause it's on some secondary HBO channel and they know no one's watching.

I actually turned this movie off after an hour, when my wife suggested, "Maybe Oprah has something interesting on." No amount of booze could make this movie tolerable. I'm not sure what algorithm Netflix is using to suggest this film to me, but they need to hire some new mathematicians. Ben Stiller proves yet again he is a one-trick-pony here. Jennifer Love is...Jennifer Love. Will Ferrel -- god help me -- is under-utilized. Decent enough premise. Perhaps different editing could have helped? Maybe some T&A? If not, less adult-oriented humor so I could have played Candyland with the kids while suffering through the last 20 minutes? And for god's sake, a movie abut musicians sure could use a decent soundtrack!

Almost every comment or review you will read about this one is accurate. Whether you like it or not is up to you. You might also see someone write something about the team making a good effort. This is true too.

You'll see some people saying there's just too much dialogue. This is true as well. And they'll mostly say Amy Brenneman is the one that stands out. And that's true too.

But the movie drags. For all the good intentions, for all the clever skits, it drags - and that's unfortunate. It's fun to watch - Bierko is a riot and Hewitt is gorgeous, and let's not forget the Stillers in a wacky portrayal - but it's bits and pieces, it's too disparate, it doesn't grab you through a well organised and successful plot - it's bits and pieces with a thread someone tried to sew through it all afterwards. The story doesn't have momentum of its own and the plot mechanisms seem contrived and arbitrary. And you don't feel any empathy for any of the characters - not even for Amy's. Not enough to keep you enjoying, really enjoying the movie, on the edge of your seat, and so forth and so on. And stylistically it tries to attack everything at once - and that's never going to work.

You may enjoy this one - minimally. And it isn't for their not making an effort. But there are important ingredients missing. The acting's mostly great, the writing too - there just isn't enough good plot packed story. It drags on.