'Suburbicon' is a darkly amusing quirkfest (review)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- "Suburbicon" is many things. One thing it is not is a comedy in any conventional sense. Maybe it should be classified as an oddity. It is saturated in clever quirkiness. It is also a very dark spoof on the underbelly of suburban life in the 1950s.

Matt Damon plays Gardner Lodge, a white-collar accountant who lives with his wheelchair-bound wife, her twin sister Margaret (with both roles played by Julianne Moore) and the couple's 10-year-old son Nick (Noah Jupe).

They live in the idyllic, manicured neighborhood of Suburbicon. But cracks in that perfect prefab facade are beginning to show in the form of a black family moving in and enraging the neighbors.

Lodge has problems of his own. He's having an affair with his wife's sister and would like to trade his wife in for the money he's taken out on her in a life insurance policy.

To that end, he hires a couple of local goons to pretend to rob the family house and then over-chloroform his wife. Things go awry when the goons get picked up by police, and Lodge and his sister-in-law fail to pick the two out of a lineup in the presence of young Nick, who saw them as well.

The insurance scheme begins to fray around the edges when an adjuster for the company, played by Oscar Isaac, calls Lodge on the fraud and demands all the money. Things get further complicated when the two goons start forcefully asking Lodge for the money he promised to pay them but has been withholding. Meanwhile, a race riot is brewing over the new family that has moved into the neighborhood.

"Suburbicon" is reminiscent in some ways of "Fargo" and "Blood Simple," the Coen Brothers' debut movie. "Suburbicon" was written by a team that includes Joel and Ethan Coen as well as George Clooney and Grant Heslov.

This is Clooney's sixth time in the director's chair for a feature film, and he handles everything beautifully. There are a lot of moving parts in "Suburbicon," and somehow Clooney manages to make them all swing in unison.

There are moments of both mild mirth and true terror. There is action, suspense and a moment or two of genuine tenderness. This is quite clearly an odd duck of a movie whose gifts will undoubtedly elude some moviegoers. It's not for everyone. But I enjoyed every minute. Noah Jupe as Nick steals the show.

Source: cleveland