The Burbs

The Burbs has somehow become even more enjoyable for me as it has got older. It is basically a bunch of bored neighbours convincing themselves that the strange people next door must be murderers because, apparently, nobody in suburbia has anything better to do.

Tom Hanks is brilliant as Ray because he feels like a completely normal bloke who slowly gets dragged into his own obsession. At the start he just wants a quiet break. Before long he is spying on neighbours and treating the street like a crime scene.

That is where most of the comedy comes from for me. The film takes really ordinary suburban behaviour and lets the characters blow it completely out of proportion. Everyone becomes far too invested in what the Klopeks are doing, and the more serious they take it, the funnier it gets.

I also like that it gets a bit darker without ever stopping being a comedy. There is enough horror in the setup to keep you wondering whether they might actually be right, but the film never turns into something grim.

There is a good little idea underneath all of it too. Ray and the others decide what their neighbours are like before they really know anything about them. People still do that constantly. Someone is quiet, dresses strangely or keeps to themselves and suddenly the whole street has invented a backstory for them.

The ambulance bit still cracks me up. By that point the whole thing has descended into such chaos that it feels completely normal for this film. You actually feel somewhat relieved that he was kind of right all along, even if it puts our hero in trouble.

I can see why it became a cult favourite. It is not the Tom Hanks movie people usually bring up first, but it has its own weird charm and it is ridiculously easy to rewatch.

This is exactly the sort of film I would stick on during a bank holiday afternoon and then end up watching all the way through even if I had seen it ten times already.