LITTLE BOXES MADE OF TICKY-TACKY........IN THE ICKY-WACKY "SUBURBICON"........

Suburbicon (2017)   BQ's been guilty, we admit, of resorting to that tired film-critic phrase...."somewhere in this mess there's a good movie trying to get out...."

             Not for this movie, though.

             Oh there's another movie in here, alright........but it never saw the light of day.

              Director-screenwriter George Clooney exhumed an old, unproduced Coen Brothers script.....which we would generously describe as a half-assed variation of 'Fargo'......only set in a 1950's Eishenhower-era pre-fab suburban community......(modeled on the infamous Levittown. which of course inspired the legendary satirical song ..."little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky....and they all look just the same...")

              The obvious part of this movie plundered from the Coens involves a stolid, whitebread suburbanite (Matt Damon, outfitted like his CIA wonk from 'The Good Sheperd'), who plots with his sister-in-law to murder his wife for the life insurance settlement....(both roles played by Julienne Moore).

               This doesn't sit well with Matt's little boy, who catches on early and spends the entire movie traumatized, terrorized and constantly threatened with death.

               Is this stuff supposed to be funny?  Darkly funny, we guess?

               If the Coens had ever gotten around to directing it.......maybe.

               George Clooney, however, isn't the Coen brothers........he lacks the quirky spirit and witty imagination to make any of this even remotely ironic or amusing.

                In his clumsy hands, the whole dopey-thriller aspect falls apart. If we were meant to laugh at the spectacle of Damon's evil scheme collapsing into a pile of gory murders......well, that's news to us.

               And Clooney's salivating over sequences of the terrified little boy put into mortal danger just makes the film downright ugly and repulsive.

               We haven't even mentioned the worst thing about "Suburbicon".......Clooney's careless, cavalier use of the true, shameful incident from Levittown history......when the residents rampaged and rioted around the home of a black family who'd dared to move into the all white community.

               In Clooney's clumsy mitts, the tormenting of the black family serves only as a facile, satirical counterpoint to the psychotic abyss of Damon's white Christian household........as well as distracting the mob and the cops from the supposedly rib-tickling body count racked up by all of Damon's backfiring machinations.

                Clooney might have been way better off attempting an honest straightforward depiction of the black family and the horrible siege they endured at the hands of the hateful Levittowners.......he could easily have put together a compelling, disturbing film along the lines of his "Good Night And Good Luck"

                Using the Levittown episode as a parallel plotline to run along side his lame attempt to duplicate a typical Coen Brothers comedy-of-murders...........terrible, terrible.....all kinds of wrong.

                The one lone bright spot in this mess........Oscar Issac, who turns up in full controlled-mania Coen Brothers mode.......carrying on as if he's the only actor in the film who somehow got his hands on the original Coens script......and performed accordingly.

              For his work alone, we'll scrape up 1/2 of a star (1/2).........the rest of it......a ticky-tacky botch on the hillside.