Word: balaban
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What's got into moviemakers lately, that they are so enthusiastically trashing their most genteel patrons? Bob Balaban's recent comedy Parents, a kind of robin's-egg Blue Velvet, limned a '50s family, as placid and telegenic as the Andersons on Father Knows Best, that devours human flesh. Now Middle America gets a return visit from Joe Dante, guerrilla terrorist in Spielbergian suburbia. His Gremlins was a comic nightmare in which midget monsters invade a wonderful-life town and act up like the Hell's Angels in a malt shop. In The 'Burbs, the gremlins are the townspeople themselves...
...savior in whom this earnest vision burns is a prosperous Jewish horse trader named Balaban. He buys an old mountaintop hotel, formerly a monastery, near Vienna and issues a prospectus promising horseback riding, swimming, and the painless eradication of embarrassing gestures and ugly accents. And soon the place is filled with aging Jews of both sexes who have become burdens to their assimilated children...
...year or so everything works as planned, and although some visitors cannot endure the strict regime, others are indeed returned to their homes much strengthened and freed of such Jewish characteristics as smoking, card playing and endless, idle conversation. But Balaban himself, strong and idealistic as he is, weakens under the strain of supporting the project psychologically and financially. He allows himself to be drawn into the eternal argumentation, coffee drinking and poker games. Revealing gestures that he rooted out of his nervous system as a young man begin to reappear. He puts on weight. From time to time...
...mention of Nazis or prophecy of war. Most of the inmates have come to the mountain because their lives have fallen apart: they have lost jobs, perhaps, or were embarrassments to their families. They are uneasy, but not really frightened, and certainly not indignant. No one, including the leader Balaban, thinks of protesting against abuse and prejudice. Other groups have defects too, admits one guest who is stalwartly trying to rid himself of tainted habits by the prescribed self-help routines. "But their defects are healthy. People say that the Austrians are heavy drinkers. Of course they are, but that...
Cassavetes is at his saturnine best in this role, and Christine Lahti is fine as a more sympathetic M.D. Two other supporting performances, both offcast, are emblematic of the care with which Whose Life has been made. One is by Bob Balaban as Ken's attorney. This is the third time this year that Balaban has played a lawyer (Prince of the City and Absence of Malice are the others), but the slick prosecutor of his earlier outings has here given way to a stammering humanism. The other is by Ken McMillan, the vulgarian of True Confessions and Ragtime...