This DVD item from Geneon [Pioneer] was reviewed on 10-Dec-2008.
Parents Reference DVD. Classifications : General Comedy Genres DVD Video Black Comedy Comedy Genres DVD Video Eccentric Families By Theme Comedy Genres DVD Video Mischievous Children By Theme Comedy Genres DVD Video General AAS Parody & Spoo . Click the following link to view the cover of Parents. Related topics: 1989-01-27. General. Comedy. Genres. DVD. Video. Black Comedy. Comedy. Genres. DVD. Video. requestid: ca80529c-66f1-4675-ae65-b11701e8503b
requestprocessingtime: 0.0670680000000000
salesrank: 102176
numberofitems: 1
packagedimensions: 5871018542
1) DVD DVD Parents by Geneon [Pioneer]. The opening scenes of this "dark comedy" feature great 1950s cars, decor, costumes, and musical score! Perky housewife "Mom" is a kitchen whiz who serves up tasty looking left-overs every night. White shirt-and-tie "Dad" is ravenous after putting in long days at Toxico. (Clever company name!) Little Michael just wants to make friends at his new school - and eat something for dinner that´s not "mystery meat." What a wholesome, 50s era set-up for a comedy about cannibals! I was having a fun time and even asking for "seconds" at the dinner table - until the little boy started having nightmares. Then I lost my appetite completely.
This is NOT a comedy and definitely not for the kiddies. The first fifteen minutes or so are fine, but watch out! When the film-makers start splashing blood around, "Parents" becomes a totally different kind of movie. That´s too bad because it could have been a fine little comedy.
I have two questions for the screenwriter of this kitchen fiasco - what did the family eat in their old hometown, and why does their son aged 9 or 10 wait until now to refuse to eat "meat"? My mother made the worst liver in town and we kids somehow choked it down. "C´mon, Michael, how about taking just one bite of this delicious meat dish? Your mother slaved in the kitchen all afternoon..."
Ugh, please pass the Tums and hit the rewind button on the VCR. Think I´ll pass on dessert tonight, too!
¤ 2) DVD DVD Parents by Geneon [Pioneer]. I´m probably wrong about this (as demonstrated by all the other reader comments), but what I got from this film was a dark eerie tale about a disturbed child whose father´s job happens to involve experimentation with corpses. I think the father was bringing the body parts home to experiment on, not eat. He was shown to be obsessed with his job, so this makes sense to me -- and would also explain why he doesn´t want his son in the cellar, to find out his secret, that he´s been illegally bringing corpses home to experiment upon.
Furthermore, when the school psychologist is killed, they don´t show who did it. I think the psychotic child did it, and didn´t even realize it.
Finally, at the end of the film, the father knows that the son has seen the corpses in the basement, and THAT´S why he says "So now you know our little secret." As for the meat, he never says, "This is dead people." He just says, "You´ll learn to love it, just like your mother did," which is just a response to the boy refusing to eat his meat for a couple weeks in a row. When he sets out to KILL the child, it´s only because the child tried to kill him first and it pushed him over the top!
That´s my interpretation anyway. I don´t think they were cannibals. If so, that´s kind of a lame ending.¤ 3) DVD DVD Parents by Geneon [Pioneer]. Something dark and sinister lurks below the surface of the otherwise polished surface of 1950s suburbia in this unusual and quirky movie. The bland, boring 50s is revealed to be anything but that as Balaban creates an increasingly menacing atmosphere, building up the tension to a fever pitch before the deep, dark secret is finally revealed. When it is, the strangeness and incongruity of it all just adds to the drama and tension, and one wonders how the movie will end. Well, it does end a little predictably, but overall it´s a fine movie with a very odd premise, which I won´t reveal here so as not to spoil it for you. But this first directorial effort by Bob Balaban is worth your time if you enjoy different, strange, or offbeat movies, and this one certainly has those qualities in spades.¤ 4) DVD DVD Parents by Geneon [Pioneer]. Parents (Bob Balaban, 1989)
TV director Balaban makes his feature debut with this little comedy about which I can´t quite figure out what to say. I know I was unimpressed with it; I simply can´t figure out why.
The story concerns Michael (Bryan Madorsky, in his only screen role), a schoolboy who comes to believe that his parents Nick (Brokeback Mountain´s Randy Quaid) and Lily (The Exorcism of Emily Rose´s Mary Beth Hurt) are cannibals. This, obviously, messes with his head, which puts him on contact with school counselor Millie Dew (A Hatful of Rain´s Sandy Dennis, in one of her final screen appearances). Is it all in his head, or are his parents really cannibals?
There is nothing terribly wrong with this film, per se; the acting is competent if nothing special, the script is predictable but decent, and at times amusing, the direction is solid without being notable, etc. It´s average to the point of being innocuous-- which is a problem in a film about a kid who thinks his parents may be trying to feed him parts of other human beings.
And you know, for some reason, I just fgured out what´s been nagging me this whole time. So how did it take this kid until he was ten, or thereabouts (I don´t remember his age ever being specified), to start wondering what it is he´s eating? And why does he stop? It makes no sense-- and as it´s the basis of the movie, it undermines everything else. **¤ 5) DVD DVD Parents by Geneon [Pioneer]. you´ll never want to eat meat again.
set in the 1950´s suburbia, think of
"the ´burbs" on acid and you´ll get
the idea of what you are in for.¤ 6) DVD DVD Parents by Geneon [Pioneer]. Little Michael has everything his ten-year-old heart could desire - including a great dinner every night. But soon he questions where all the "leftovers" come from and discovers that his dad is bringing home much more than the bacon. Yikes, his parents are cannibals! Special Features include: Cast and crew filmographies, trailer, film facts, and scene access. Randy Quaid, Mary Beth Hurt¤ 7) DVD DVD Parents by Geneon [Pioneer]. In Parents, director Bob Balaban deconstructs our Father Knows Best perception of ´50s suburbia, skewing it via moody cinematography and Angelo Badalamenti´s sinister score. Ten-year-old Michael Lamele (Bryan Madorsky) thinks his parents (Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt) are cannibals. His constant fear of his folks and their supposedly evil doings begin to warp his view of the world, and he starts seeing a social worker to confront his problems. Are they merely childhood fears intensified by an overactive imagination, or do Michael´s parents really crave human flesh? Much in the way that David Lynch approached the sinister underside of small-town America in Wild at Heart, so too does Balaban challenge our notion of the ´burbs as an escape from the harsh reality of the city. If anything, Michael´s parents show their true colors once they become wrapped up in the materialistic, socially predatory world of suburban life. Vastly underappreciated, Balaban´s Parents is one of those rare modern horror films that uses psychology to freak you out rather than tossing buckets of blood at you (although there are a few in the film, given its theme). This is one horror film that stands up, and deserves repeated viewings. --Bryan Reesman¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 7-Jan-2009, 013023023994, 9X0-CWB-FFB-GKB-W6B-RSB-8 
Parents, DVD, Image © Geneon [Pioneer]
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