"The Suburbans" is part comedy, part drama and all misfire - in 1981 the band of the title scores its one and only hit, and in 1999 the members are talked into performing at a wedding for a fan in the Navy. A representative for entertainment company EVI later approaches them about making a comeback...
Co-writer/director/co-star Donal Gardner Ward's movie positions the group as one-hit wonders who most people don't really want back, but the group itself is more problematic than intended; if their song had been either good (like the Wonders' "That Thing You Do" from the movie of the same name) or at least a believable 1980s pastiche, their status as one-hit wonders from the Neon Decade would have been plausible. Unfortunately neither is the case, particularly the latter - as well as being a limp rock track, it sounds way too 1990s to be passable. This proves to have a knock-on effect on the movie; the person who brings them to EVI turns out to have had an obsession with one of the Suburbans since she was seven. The trouble is, she's played by Jennifer Love Hewitt - who looks as if she was barely out of Pampers in the early '80s (and she was, since she was born in 1979).
The band members are universally uninteresting, the music's boring, and it's impossible to see what the point of it all is - it looks like a home movie, it's almost never funny, it's never dramatic, and the appearance of A Flock Of Seagulls at the end marks the only true taste of/nostalgia for the 1980s in the entire movie. The appearances of Robert Loggia as the father of the bride, Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas as a club owner, Ben Stiller and Jerry Stiller as EVI bosses, J.J. Abrams (creator of "Felicity" and "Alias") as a journalist, and JLH (whose display to Amy Brenneman in the kitchen is, to be honest, the highpoint of the movie) liven things up, but not enough to raise the movie's level.
At least the last time Jennifer Love Hewitt and Bridgette Wilson were in the same movie was "I Know What You Did Last Summer," which wasn't boring.
Co-writer/director/co-star Donal Gardner Ward's movie positions the group as one-hit wonders who most people don't really want back, but the group itself is more problematic than intended; if their song had been either good (like the Wonders' "That Thing You Do" from the movie of the same name) or at least a believable 1980s pastiche, their status as one-hit wonders from the Neon Decade would have been plausible. Unfortunately neither is the case, particularly the latter - as well as being a limp rock track, it sounds way too 1990s to be passable. This proves to have a knock-on effect on the movie; the person who brings them to EVI turns out to have had an obsession with one of the Suburbans since she was seven. The trouble is, she's played by Jennifer Love Hewitt - who looks as if she was barely out of Pampers in the early '80s (and she was, since she was born in 1979).
The band members are universally uninteresting, the music's boring, and it's impossible to see what the point of it all is - it looks like a home movie, it's almost never funny, it's never dramatic, and the appearance of A Flock Of Seagulls at the end marks the only true taste of/nostalgia for the 1980s in the entire movie. The appearances of Robert Loggia as the father of the bride, Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas as a club owner, Ben Stiller and Jerry Stiller as EVI bosses, J.J. Abrams (creator of "Felicity" and "Alias") as a journalist, and JLH (whose display to Amy Brenneman in the kitchen is, to be honest, the highpoint of the movie) liven things up, but not enough to raise the movie's level.
At least the last time Jennifer Love Hewitt and Bridgette Wilson were in the same movie was "I Know What You Did Last Summer," which wasn't boring.