Jumbled suburban antics

NEIGHBORS (1981)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Neighbors" is an addle-brained and simplistically puerile black comedy. It is uninspired and hardly black enough for a satire, and it attempts to forge some semblance of reality crossed with a lunacy that never develops into anything.

John Belushi is the straight-as-an-arrow husband, Earl, married to a bored wife (Kathryn Walker). There is nothing engaging about their relationship - he watches TV (slightly disturbed by all the crime reports in the news) and she overcooks the waffles. That is until the obnoxious couple, Vic and Ramona (Dan Aykroyd and Cathy Moriarty), move next door and cause havoc, mostly to Earl. Earl's wife has no issue with the kooky couple who come over for dinner - Vic decides to buy Italian food that he himself supposedly buys with Earl's money (actually Vic whips up a standard spaghetti dinner in his house and pretends to drive to the fictitious restaurant). Ramona is the sultry wife who takes a bath in the house and tempts Earl by slipping into his bed naked. None of these events bother Earl's wife in the least, or their daughter who comes home after being expelled from college. That it is not an issue for Earl's wife or his daughter could have been explored in the script, but the movie abandons its own comic premise for something along the lines of disparate lunacy for the sake of lunacy.

Director John G. Alvidsen develops the atmosphere of a certain kind of dread right from the start. Belushi's atypical mannerisms and understated Earl character make him watchable right up until the end of the film. I also love to hear and see Cathy Moriarty any time she is on screen - her character has a few more shades than anyone else in the film. The problem is that the uneven script (hastily rewritten by Aykroyd) never mines any controlled tone or style. What starts out as a savage satire of suburban values and marital behaviors becomes a madcap cartoon of extremes. We hear nonstop cartoon music, we see the special-effects of those ominous electric towers, we get a hopped-up peroxide-wearing Dan Aykroyd, a tow-truck driver who beats up Earl, some swamp gags that did not elicit a smile from me, and on and on. Only Belushi (who is, once again, consistently watchable even when he displays only one or two notes of expression) and Cathy Moriarty hint at what might have been.

The biggest issue I have with "Neighbors" is that had it been at least funny on some level, I would have forgiven the wildly manic and overdone style of the film. But it is not funny, only in the mildest stretches, and has no balance between absurdity and lampooning itself. The ending left me disturbed for all the wrong reasons - more so that this was Belushi's last picture before he died than the failed attempt at satire.