Meet the Applegates
5.4 /10 1 Votes
Budget 5 million USD Duration Country United States | 5.2/10 Genre Comedy, Sci-Fi Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date February 1, 1991 Cast Ed Begley Jr. (Richard P. Applegate), (Jane Applegate), (Aunt Bea), (Johnny Applegate), Robert Jayne (Sally Applegate)Similar movies David Newman composed the music for Meet the Applegates and Heathers |
Meet the applegates part 2 of 9
Meet the Applegates is a 1990 American comedy directed by Michael Lehmann. It was filmed in 1989, but not released until 1991 due to the financial difficulties surrounding New World Pictures, the film's production company. It takes a dark, satirical look at the end of the world, nuclear holocausts, alienism and terrorism. It was filmed in Oshkosh, Appleton and Neenah, Wisconsin. It has gained a cult following.
Contents

Meet the applegates part 1 of 9
Plot

The film starts off in a forest with a family being attacked by a family of huge Brazilian Cocorada. It then moves to a typical-looking family moving into a well-off suburban Ohio neighborhood. They are the bugs that were seen earlier, after they took on human form and met every "normality" standard from the magazine Family Bazaar. They moved to the suburbs after the husband, Richard, got a job at a nuclear power plant; he works there to one day cause an explosion that would rid the world of humans and let bugs be. But after a while they drift from its normalities — the son, Johnny, a straight-laced A student, begins listening to heavy metal and becomes a junkie; Richard and his wife, Jane, drift away from each other, he having an affair at work and she becoming attached to her credit card; lastly the daughter, Sally, becomes a pregnant lesbian after being raped by a jock from the high school.

They each show their true bug form at least once in the film—Johnny does while smoking marijuana with his metalhead buddies, Sally while being raped by the jock, Richard when infiltrating the nuclear plant, and Jane when two Family Bazaar agents come to their house. As they drift away from normality (and nearly been found out by the neighbors) their aunt, Bea, is sent to help. She becomes a nuisance and they decide she should be taken care of. Richard decides to not blow up the plant, and kills Bea instead. At the end of the movie they return to their lives in Brazil, and are visited by the townspeople that grew to love them, although the plant did not blow up, enough radiation was released to remove the hair from much of the town's population.

A deleted scene reveals that Aunt Bea survived and still intends to destroy the world.
Cast
Reception

The film was met with mixed reception. Author and Critic Bryn Curt James Hammond gave the film 5 stars "This often-overlooked black comedy (due to the timing of its release being dropped on an over-saturated market along with a slew of other late 90’s comedy horrors including Society, Parents and The Burbs) is both hysterical and completely ridiculous, mixing the classic American domestic sitcom with wacky eco-comedy chic but with an edgy sardonic bite, picking the scabs of the middle class."
References
Meet the Applegates WikipediaMeet the Applegates IMDb Meet the Applegates themoviedb.org