#233 -- Parents (1989)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Bob Balaban

So, apparently this movie is considered a cult classic, and a lot of people really like it. I am not one of those people. When I found it on Netflix, I thought it would be pretty cool. It was set in the '50s, a decade I've always been particularly fond of. I love the way it's portrayed at least (because I personally don't know if things were really like that). I will say that the movie portrays the decade beautifully. The filming was great and the acting, besides one in my opinion, was wonderful. It was very colorful and aesthetically pleasing; but the problem was that it was extremely boring.

It's about a ten year old boy named Michael. He just moved to a new town (I'm assuming so that his parents could escape suspicion). He made a new little girlfriend who seemed way to sexual for her age. He suspected that his parents were cannibals. I'm  not sure what caused his suspicion, because they never did anything to raise such a suspicion, except for the fact that they ate a lot of meat. But who cares? Some people really love meat. Michael was a boring kid, and he never did much of anything. He was just kind of...there. It might have been better if he'd at least been interesting.

When I paused the movie for a bathroom break, it was at the one-hour mark, and I realized that absolutely nothing had happened for a whole hour. So we followed a boring kid and his seemingly normal parents for an hour while they did nothing. We pretty much watched his parents eat dinner, while Michael refused to do so. He did have a couple of somewhat creepy nightmares, but it wasn't enough to make up for being horrible. Michael drew some awful pictures in school, which got him sent to the school counselor. He told her of his suspicions, and she followed him to his house, where she founds some dead bodies in the basement. Once his parents found out that Michael knew their secret, they tried to kill him. He ended up living with his grandparents, who may or may not have been cannibals as well.

So, nothing happened until there was about twenty minutes left of the movie. I remember wishing that it would just hurry up and end already, and that's never a good sign. It's not good when a movie feels like a chore to watch. So I loved the scenery and the way the movie was filmed, but the movie itself was tiring and hard to watch. It was impossible for me to enjoy.

This is a short review, because there's not much to say about a movie where nothing happens. But like I said, some people really enjoy this movie; maybe you will too. Personally, I hated it. They took an interesting story and dragged it out so much that it became boring and painful. Shame.