Wordiezett So much average

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

SnoopyStyle The Applegates (Ed Begley Jr, Stockard Channing) are a peculiar suburban family. They live under assumed identities to infiltrate and sabotage the nuclear power plant. They are actually giant preying mantis from the Brazilian rainforest which is being stripped by development. Their queen, Aunt Bea (Dabney Coleman), is invading Ohio in three months. The daughter Sally falls for Vince Sampson from next door. When Vince forces himself on her, she goes mantis on him. The suburbs are harder than it seems. Sally gets pregnant. Johnny turns into a weed head. Jane goes crazy with her Discovery card. Richard gets fired. Then Aunt Bea arrives.I wouldn't say that there are any big laughs. It does have a weird dark satirical take on the suburbs. There is also an environmental message. This all adds up to an unseen cult movie. It has some fun takes. Michael Lehmann directed one of the great teen satires of all times, Heathers. This is way weirder.

merklekranz Trying to combine sci-fi with black comedy proves much too challenging and this picture misfires badly. If you are going to push an ecological message, then there must be a better vehicle than "The Applegates". Ed Begley Jr. has been in some pretty outrageous movies (see Eating Raoul), but it has to be both outrageous and entertaining, which this film is not. None of the characters elicit the tiniest bit of sympathy, and the "storage problem" for their prey is just one of several tedious situations which are endlessly played out. The two insect teenagers are especially annoying, and Dabney Coleman's "Aunt Bee" is little more than an embarrassment to his career. In summary, do not go out of your way to find a copy of "The Applegates". You will be just as disappointed as I was. - MERK

Paul Andrews Meet the Applegates, there's the head of the family Richard Applegate (Ed Begley Jr.) also known as Dick, his wife Jane (Stockard Channing) & their two teenage children Johnny (Robert Jayne as Bobby Jacoby) & Sally (Camile Cooper as Cami Cooper). The Applegates at first glance appear to be a normal middle class American family when they move into a quiet suburban town somewhere in Ohio to all their new neighbours & friends. But in reality the Applegates are in fact giant cockroach type insects from the Amazonian rain forests disguised as humans. These giant insects are fed up of us humans chopping down their home, polluting the planet & having no respect or regard for the Earth & it's other inhabitants, fair enough... Dick talks himself into a job at the local nuclear power plant & plans to cause a meltdown, the Applegates & their species then hope the resulting radiation leak will wipe out the entire human race & leave the insect kingdom to live in peace. At first things go extremely well & their plan works perfectly but soon enough the pleasures & peril's of everyday American life begin to have an effect on their family unit & their plans. First Sally has sex with Vincent Sampson (Adam Biesk) whom finds out that she is a giant cockroach so Sally cocoons him & takes him home which causes problems as Vincent is the son of one of the Applegates neighbours, Greg Sampson (Glenn Shadix) who is a bug exterminator. Johnny gets involved with two dope smoking twins, Kevin (Philip Arthur Ross) & Kenny (Steven Robert Ross) & becomes addicted to dope himself. Jane can't stop buying things on credit, Dick has an affair with his secretary Dottie (Savannah Smith Boucher) & gets himself fired from the nuclear plant. Their carefully thought out plans & the very existence of their species lay in tatters as living an everyday American life has all but destroyed them, but others of their kind are on the way...Co-written & directed by Micheal Lehmann I thought Meet the Applegates was a highly original & very enjoyable comic horror. The script by Lehmann & Redbeard Simmons really hits the nail on the head with it's witty & satirical look on middle class American life. I loved the scene where Jane wouldn't have sex with Dick so he finds a picture of two insects having sex & masturbates, or the scene when Johnny questions if smoking dope is safe & his two spaced out friends say "we do it all the time" "and look at us", in fact Meet the Applegates is full of great individual scenes. The Applegates descent from the perfect American family into the emotional wrecks they ended up as was just spot on for me & although obviously the story is pure fantasy it seemed almost believable. It has considerable charm, the themes & issues that it raises & tackles are handled well & it manages to both tell a story which at the same time has a strong message & manages to entertain. Meet the Applegates is rather silly when all said & done but if you want something a little different & you are able to just go with the bizarre notion of giant cockroaches disguised as humans then you should be rewarded with a great viewing experience, the ending was a bit of a cop out though. The creature effects by Kevin Yagher are generally impressive & the bugs looked both quite cute & creepy at the same time. The transformation scenes are pretty good as well. The acting is pretty much spot on from everyone & all the characters are likable except Johnny Applegate & Aunt Bea (Dabney Coleman) who both irritated me. Meet the Applegates is generally very well made with nice production values & nothing really to complain about. Overall I really liked Meet the Applegates, it's a very original piece of storytelling that definitely stands out as being just that bit different which makes a nice change. I wholeheartedly recommend Meet the Applegates & urge anyone to at least give it a go if you get the opportunity.

bob the moo Angered by a logging company encroaching deep into their natural forest, a family of large insects camouflage themselves as humans and blend themselves into a small American town. Dick gets a job with the nuclear power plant in order to sabotage it and wage war on the human population. However the family finds that their attempts to blend in are working a little too easy and they endanger their own mission. Despite being a little too gory for my tastes, this comedy is actually quite sharp in it's main satire on American life. The main joke for me was the way the family of bugs are sucked into the lifestyle of American mores – the mother gives in to commercialism, the son to drugs, the daughter to teenage sex and the father to adultery. It's comical to watch their descent and works pretty well. Where's it's all going is less clear and the message is not so clear in regards whether becoming `normal' is for the best or not. What is clear is the eco message which pokes fun at those who would make war on nature (whether bug or human) without respect for other life forms.For a 90 minute film it all works pretty well and is actually quite imaginative. The gore put me off a little, in the gore of the eggs and bugs generally and I would have preferred if they had just had the bugs without all the slime and stuff. The cast do a good job carrying the material – their performances generally help keep up the mood of weirdness! Begley Jnr and Channing are both good in the leads – each giving in to their human environment. The kids are OK but the best performance is an outrageous performance from Coleman as the queen of the species – complete with full drag and moustache!Overall this never quite delivers as many laughs as it's clever and funny pitch but it is still worth a watch. It has a surreal picture book image of `normal' America that it slowly explodes. For me, you could take or leave the eco message and still enjoy the film. Not great but different enough to be worth a try.