Neighbors (1981)

Directed by John G. Avildsen. Starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Cathy Moriarty, Kathryn Walker, Tim Kazurinsky, Lauren-Marie Taylor. [R]

Barely-cohesive suburban-nightmare black comedy casts Belushi against type as a wimpy middle-class Everyman who becomes paranoid and neurotic upon the arrival of new lunatic neighbors—an intimidating boor (Aykroyd) and his sexually aggressive wife (Moriarty). Takes place over the course of less than twenty-four hours, but instead of increasing the comic tension in the unscalable Kafka-esque situations, it simply makes the experience exhausting and unpleasant to deal with so much hostility, which extends to the nature of Belushi’s own wife (Walker), their daughter (Taylor), and a truculent mechanic (Kazurinsky). The final reel and its muddled tone and message doesn’t work at all, and it should be noted that Thomas Berger’s satirical novel of the same name went in a different direction for the ending. Scribe Larry Gelbart is credited for the adaptation, but he was unhappy with how it was drastically rewritten during production. Belushi’s final film.

44/100