Parents (1989)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s on the Menu: A boy suspects his parents are cannibals and it turns out he’s right. so now you don’t need to see it. You’re welcome.

Here are some of my observations as I dined:

• Directed by Bob Balaban? The guy from Seinfeld who’s obsessed with Elaine?
• Close up of an Oldsmobile. My first car was an ‘86 Oldsmobile Calais. It was a pile of shit, but it had a calculator in the center dashboard, for some reason. Anyway, I ran dingleballs along the inside. 
• Seems to be set in the ‘50s, when I guess America was supposed to be great. Except for people of color and most women and homosexuals and, well, any non-white-male-middle-to-upper-class people.
• The mere casting of Randy Quaid makes this creepy. Just like Independence Day. 
• The boy, Michael, is afraid of the dark but his room has enough moonlight pouring in to kill a Mogwai.
  
  

  So you can really get a feel for the sheer magnitude of captivating thrills this movie offers, I will be posting stills of the characters having various dinners, which makes up 73% of the movie’s runtime.

• He has some dream that as he lays in bed he sinks in a pool of extremely watery blood. It’s like Death Bed without the death but with Randy Quaid, so much scarier.
• Michael mumbles more than Christy Brown. I can’t understand a word he’s saying. 
• Michael meets another weirdo in school who says she’s an alien from the moon. These kids are like 12. 
• Suburban cannibalism seems like a lot of work. Why not just get monkey meat from the butcher? Orangutan was cheap and abundant back then. 
• I assume the parents kill their victims by boring them to death?
• When I was a kid we had clear Pyrex pots, and I have a vivid memory of my dad dropping a live lobster into one of them and I watched it and that was pretty fucked up and Jesus H. Lobster this movie is boring.
  
  

  This dinner seems slightly more formal than the first one, but the food looks exactly the same. Wait, is Mom serving human flesh?? Yes.

• Unless there’s some completely unforeseen twist the parents are cannibals and Michael will find out and it will catch up to them. Zzzzzzz. 
• The moon girl who was also new at school his the daughter of Randy Quaid’s boss? And that family is not new in town at all? That makes no sense. Or maybe she didn’t say she was new? I thought she did? I wasn’t really paying attention in between micronaps.
• They’re playing cards and said “trump” and I threw up all the human meat I had for dinner.
• This asshole movie is literally half over and literally nothing has happened, allegedly. 
• Another cooking sequence. Michael is hiding in the closet and sausages are coming to life around him. Maybe the twist is that he’s a fucking nut. Or maybe his parents are cannibals and in addition he’s a fucking nut.
  
  

  Here’s one of just Michael having dinner. That is the only expression he has. Is Mom serving him human flesh?? Yes.

• Unlike the knives they use to chop up human meat, this movie is very dull. 
• Now the moon girl is acting like a drunken slut. Still uninteresting. 
• The only good thing about the ‘50s is when Marty McFly went back and changed shit. That and when The Ramones appeared on the Sha Na Na show. 
• I’d rather cook my own left foot and eat it then puke it up and eat it again than subject myself to the rest of this bullshit soup. 
• Half hour left NOTHING HAS FUCKING HAPPENED. 
• Randy Quaid was some kind of chemical scientist, now he’s in a morgue. If the parents really are just cannibals then it’s nothing you couldn’t get from the VHS box and a boring waste of time. 
• If cannibals broke into my house right now and told me they were going to eat me but I could finish watching this first I’d be like, “Bon appetite, mother fuckers.”
• I don’t think I can ever watch Seinfeld or Close Encounters of the Third Kind again after this.
  
  

  Here they are getting ready for dinner! This movie perfectly encapsulates the thrill a young child has when it’s time to get ready for dinner.

• So Michael snoops in the basement and finds a severed leg on a hook and is it all in his head or is it that I truly don’t care or both?
• So Michael’s guidance counselor comes to his house and finds a body so yeah it’s just a boring cannibal movie and I really just want to go to bed now but I’m powering through for you, our two readers. 
• Here’s a rip-off of the Halloween closet scene and it doesn’t make an ounce of sense. 
• Michael knocks out his dad and in the next scene it’s Michael who’s tied up and what fucking sense does that make at all?
  
• So they try to feed Michael’s guidance counselor to him but he stabs Randy Quaid, then the mom stabs Randy Quaid, then Randy Quaid stabs her, then I still don’t care. 
• This was made the same year as Christmas Vacation. What a roller coaster ride for Randy Quaid.
  
• The house explodes. Good. 
• Nothing happened with the little girl at all so every scene with her was pointless. Just like every other scene. 
• Michael goes to live with his grandparents. I bet they’re cannibals too!!!! 
• Yep. What a fascinating surprise. 

Is It Actually Palatable: I’d rather watch Randy Quaid’s latest colonoscopy. 

Scariest Entree: If you’re eating soup out of a human skull while watching this you may fall asleep with your face it in and drown.

Is It Raw and Bloody: I don’t think it was? Honestly I don’t even remember because my mind was so numb from boredom.

Any Mouth-Watering Nudity: I remember Randy Quaid standing outside my window fully nude and leering at me but I’m pretty sure that was unrelated to this movie.

Most Delectable Line: “I don’t love you anymore.” – Michael, speaking to God, the Gods, and the Universe after watching this movie

Most Delicious Scene: Even this scene where something interesting is potentially happening is unbelievably dull. Is the kid nuts?? Yes. Is that human meat his mom is preparing?? Yes.  

Most Flavorless Scene: I saw this in my mind’s eye during one of the naps I took during the movie.

Overall: If you want to be bored to death and will your corpse to cannibals, this is the movie for you. It seems maybe there was a possibility possibly that the filmmakers wanted to make a film about how kids are terrified of the adult world and how strange it seems to them, and if the movie ended with the viewer questioning whether the parents were cannibals or not and if it was all in the kids head then maybe we would have had something interesting here (although the entire middle portion of the movie still would have been as dull as a butcher knife made of cottage cheese). But no, it just turned out that they are indeed evil cannibals and it’s as interesting as watching Randy Quaid eat for 90 minutes.

Score: 1 Serving of Human Ass Meat (out of 10)