The Suburbanators

Rating

Director

Gary Burns

Screenplay

Gary Burns

Length

1h 27m

Starring

Joel McNichol, Stephen Spender, Stewart Burdett, Jacob Banigan, Jihad Traya, Ahmad Taha, Rogy Masri

MPAA Rating

Unrated

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
The ‘film school’ style of film is an ever-present staple of the movie industry. The trend gives hope to would-be screenwriters and directors that their stories will one day be produced. Unfortunately, it also makes it possible for even the most unoriginal film to find its way to video.

The Suburbanators is one of these films. It’s three stories wrapped into one confused mess. There are central themes connecting the characters and they all share scenes, but the significance of these stories intermingling is not apparent.

Al (Joel McNichol) is a self-conscious romantic whose idea of love is so tarnished by outside influences that he can’t seem to find a relationship. Bob (Stephen Spender) is his buddy who believes that everything is as he sees it and never more than it appears. His advice manages to get the two in trouble far more than it helps them. They ride around town talking about their relationships and what’s wrong with the world, but never manage to find a common goal, except to get high.

Carl (Stewart Burdett) is a cynical snob who believes everyone is as he believes them to be. His untapped intelligence seems to blind him to the reality of each situation. He’s filled with plenty of compassion but mistakes it for ire consistently. Carl’s buddy Eric (Jacob Banigan) is soft-spoken and sympathetic. He can’t stand to see another person suffer and isn’t afraid to admit it.

Salah (Jihad Traya), Kareem (Ahmad Taha) and Roger (Rogy Masri) are three Arab youths who are trying to retrieve possessions from Salah’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment. None of them appear to have a distinctive character. They are stereotypes of unemotional hoods with nothing more to do than try to break into said apartment.

The only times these stories connect is when the story slows and the film desperately needs to shift to another storyline. The shift happens when characters from one storyline happen to be at the same place or passing by characters from another storyline. The convention is poorly used and fraught with flaws.

The biggest challenge here – as with all movies – is to make the movie entertaining and topical. The topical part isn’t obvious, but there are plenty of entertaining moments. Unfortunately, the dialogue only works in some scenes and other times it sounds like philosophical tripe.

Writer/director Gary Burns appears to have at least a marginal understanding of dialogue. However, many of his characters’ soliloquies and banter are repetitive. Perhaps his goal was to make everyone seem to be just like everyone else. The idea is misleading at best and doesn’t add meaning to the film.

The Suburbanators attempts to be deep and shallow simultaneously. The film’s plot is actually three separate ones, each of which lacks a meaningful climax. The storylines sit on a flat plateau with just occasional up and down moments. What could have been an entertaining statement film turns into a marginally entertaining non-statement film, avoiding every point it could have possibly made.

Review Written

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