As an independent journalist, Bob MacKenzie writes articles for a number of print and internet publications. The local and national scope of his articles for the Kingston Net Times, the Kingston Business Journal, and other publications make them of interest to readers not just in Kingston but across North America. This article is reprinted here for your information. All material included in this page is copyright © Bob MacKenzie, 1996. No reproduction for any reason is allowed without prior permission in writing from the author.

The article below was published on the internet in the Kingston Net Times.

The Suburbanators

...life between the malls.

Written and Directed by Gary Burns

1995

87 minutes

For Openers

Because The Suburbanators is short as feature films go, the Princess Court Cinema has chosen to precede it with Cory Lassiter's short, Tenants and Landlords, a wry commentary on modern life. This short is a good choice as it appears stylistically to be much the same as the feature and leads the viewer naturally into the necessary temperament.

On the other hand, Lassiter's film, while somewhat rough around the edges, comes across as the better of the two productions. This is partially because Lassiter appears to have a better handle on what constitutes story than does The Suburbanators' Gary Burns and partially because Lassiter limits the length of his film to accommodate the amount of material he has.

Tenants and Landlords is a slice of life gone awry, a brief domestic drama wrought with tension that quickly moves the audience to sympathy for certain characters and sets up the surprise ending surprisingly well.

The Feature

The Suburbanators has received positive press from a number of Canadian and American reviewers, but when the film is actually viewed the reasons for this are unclear. Based upon the writing of one prominent American reviewer, it may be that the critics were just not paying attention. This reviewer, who shall remain nameless, ascribed some importance to the presence of "talk radio" throughout the background of the film. In fact, what was in the background of the film was rock radio featuring more than half a dozen Calgary bands.

Canadian reviewers, on the other hand, appear to give The Suburbanators high points simply because it is a new Canadian film by a young Canadian film-maker. As well, reviewers seem to excuse some aspects of this production because it was produced on a low budget and because it was Burns' first feature film. In fact, as a Canadian film, this production is a sellout, pure and simple.

Notwithstanding the positive reviews it has received, this film is inconsequential, inconsistent, and often just plain boring. This has nothing to do with the fact that its central characters have very ordinary lives and that the writer/director does nothing to glamorize them. Richard Linklater's Slacker, to which this picture has been compared, is a film very much in the same genre and features characters with similar flat lives, yet it still manages to create audience empathy for the characters. The British film Secrets and Lies, which recently showed at the Princess Court, also features similar characters but becomes quite a moving drama.

The main problem is that in this tale there is little -- if anything -- to redeem any of the seven central characters. Perhaps the most intriguing of them are three young musicians who, in their quest to redeem their instruments from a friend's apartment, speak almost entirely in untranslated Arabic.

Gary Burns, in his director's statement, makes it seem he had set out on purpose to make a boring film. "Young guys looking for dope can be amusing at times, but as in real life, it is a banal pursuit. It is an activity usually characterized by a complete lack of drama. It is, in actuality, anti-drama."

Burns also states that he wanted to examine the "uncommunicative nature and sexist attitudes of these young men towards the women in their lives. I wanted to deal with that dialogue that happens between guys when no one else is around, and treat it realistically. The characters inThe Suburbanators would probably not consider themselves sexist, but there is that immaturity and social bravado that comes out when they are in the privacy of a car. Examining this behavior is perhaps an atonement for my own attitude as a youth."

One wonders if self-flagellation is a valid excuse for boring one's audience.

The basic premise of The Suburbanators appears to be that several groups of young men are roaming about the city looking for something -- perhaps themselves. It may be a function of my age or the fact that I grew up in Calgary, where the film was shot and often had similar days and evenings as a young man, but rather than Slacker what came to my mind rather early in the screening was American Graffiti, a story along similar lines about Los Angeles, a city to which Calgary has sometimes been compared.

A motion picture combining the characterization and drama of American Graffiti with Burns' well intentioned social realism would have been an exciting innovation in Canadian cinema. And it could have been realized using the same simple techniques that Burns' low budget dictated he employ.

The three Arabic-speaking characters are a case in point. They could have provided a strong dramatic centre to this piece. According to Burns, "their portrayal as average guys with the same problems and concerns as the other characters, is the antithesis of the now common and absurd Hollywood characterization of Arabs as terrorists. However, their characters run deeper than just anti-stereotype and their inclusion exposes the pervasiveness of suburban values." This is a tension never fully realized in The Suburbanators.

Earlier, I mentioned that The Suburbanators is, in my opinion, a sellout. I do not say this in just the artistic but in the nationalistic sense as well. About the Westbrook Mall, in and around which Burns shot much of this story, he laments, "Malls don't usually age well, but this mall has held up pretty good, although unfortunately the Woolco has been replaced by a Walmart." This complaint about the Americanization of our malls seems cynical under the circumstances. The Suburbanators is the Walmart of Canadian art films.

Within a few moments of viewing, I recognized the locale as my home-town of Calgary. I suspect most Canadian viewers would have soon recognized it at least as a Canadian city. Burns attempts, badly, to disguise the city and present it as a generic North American anytown.

In doing so, he puts Alberta licence plates out of focus -- but they are still recognizable -- and avoids anything that might place the city anywhere specific except in the west. However, the Canada Post logo on the mailboxes and other clues betray his attempts. Especially outrageous was the scene where an airplane towing a sign flies overhead and instead of Canadian television call letters refers to station WDTV.

Rather than try to fake an American movie, Burns might be better directed to devote his obvious talent to telling a truly Canadian story in a truly Canadian film. To do otherwise is a betrayal of the large amounts of private and governmental financing his film has received from the Canadian people.

A saving grace is Burns' use of some excellent local Calgary bands for the musical sound-track of The Suburbanators. The film is almost worth seeing just for that.