MEET THE APPLEGATES

US, 1990, 82 minutes, Colour.
Ed Begley Jr, Stockard Channing, Dabney Coleman.
Directed by Michael Lehman.

Meet the Applegates is a black, spoof comedy. It targets the clean and edifying image of the American family, the kinds of movies of the '50s and early '60s which seem unreal in retrospect. However, the context is the environment, the destruction of the Brazilian forests, nuclear power - and the revenge of nature on America.

The film offers us giant insects who can be transformed into humans - according to the comic book and reader for the Indians in Brazil, Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane and their family become the apple pie American family - but are destroyed by sex, drugs, infidelity and credit card greed.

Ed Begley Jnr and Stockard Channing are very good as Dick and Jane. Dabney Coleman is Aunt Bea - and there is a joke with Coleman dressed (and moustache) as the feminine Aunt Bea. There are hit and miss comic sequences - and the finale ends in the more or less expected way. However, along the way there is some sardonic humour on matters American. Direction and co-screenwriting credit is for Michael Lehmann, director of Heathers and Hudson Hawk.

1. Oddball comedy and spoof? Attack on things American?

2. The Brazilian forests and the Indians' way of life, the special effects for the giant insects, the transfer to suburbia, USA?

3. The comic style of the film, environmental drama, the American reading books and their coming alive, the picture-book American family? Suburbia, the nuclear plant? Violence? The songs and the musical score?

4. The title and its irony, the work of Michael Lehmann?

5. The forest, the dams, the insects being displaced, Aunt Bea and her control? The dilemma for the insects? The decision to attack and go to America? The Indians, the American picture-book, the incarnation of the insects as Dick and Jane and family?

6. The Applegates and their migration to Ohio and the significance of the Middle American town of Median? Their mission, human form - yet their insect diet, trash and sugar? Their habits of transforming into their insect forms, cocoons, being discovered?

7. Apple pie family, the town, the house and its look, style? School, church, factory? Everything nice?

8. At home, adapting to the American way of life? Insect values asserting themselves? Their neighbour, the exterminator and their fears?

9. The collapse of the American way, corruptible - the spoof of American collapse (and the echoes of so many movies)?
10. Sally, the teenage girl, at school, the cheerleader? The attraction of Vince? Discovery of sex, her pregnancy? Killing Vince, turning him into a cocoon? The tragedy, her going to the consciousness group, forming the lesbian relationship?

11. Johnny, the typical teenager, the twins and their drug-dealing, Johnny and his taking drugs, his collapse, the murder of the twins?

12. Jane, the busy housewife, her friends, chatter? Going shopping, the credit? Her spending spree? Dick's reaction? Her having to go out and commit a robbery? Her lies?

13. Dick, at work, his relationships, the affair with his secretary, the collapse of his career, being fired?

14. Greg, his suspicions? The townspeople and their meetings? The search for the missing people? The police? Spot's death?

15. Aunt Bea, Dabney Coleman in the transvestite joke? The phone calls, arrival, the attack on the nuclear plant? Further scheming?

16. The attack, the fire and the nuclear spectacle? The Applegates becoming so Americanised that they thwart the attack?

17. The end, back in the Brazilian forest, the experience of going to America? Environmental message? Moral message?