Meet the Applegates
Dir: Michael Lehmann
Star: Ed Begley Jr, Stockard Channing, Dabney Coleman, Bobby Jacoby

[9] The director of Heathers has certainly come up with one of the more original films of the year so far: giant insects move to Median, Ohio from the Amazon so they can sabotage the local nuclear plant and save the rain forests. Their instruction manual to "being American" is a Dick and Jane reading book - reality is somewhat different, the husband has an affair with a secretary, his wife discovers the joy of credit cards, their son is hooked on dope and the daughter gets pregnant. This very thin veneer of normality reaches monomolecular levels as people who discover the truth end up cocooned in the cellar. The problem is that, like 'Twin Peaks', there's nothing behind the weirdness: while the scenes of the family adjusting to American life are fun, it can't support an entire movie and the interval between inventive scenes gets steadily longer. However, bear in mind it took several viewings for Heathers to take root...

6/10

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