Filmmaker Mitchell Altieri’s festival-christened Lurking in Suburbia
is emblematic of what might be called the Ed Burns school of
independent cinema, named for the sort of angsty,
millennial-approximate young-adult jitters and cud-chewing ennui on
display in the actor-writer-director’s debut Sundance hit, 1995’s The Brothers McMullen,
and virtually every movie for which he’s stepped behind the camera
since then. For some folks, that’s interest-piquing praise, for others
damning dismissal, and for others still neither here nor there.

Our
flustered protagonist herein is Conrad Stevens (Joe Egender, a slightly
more animated and mainstreamed Giovanni Ribisi, though still with the
raccoon eyes), a lackadaisical writer (naturally) who on the eve of his
30th birthday finds himself evaluating his beer-fueled,
commitment-avoiding way of life with increasing antipathy. The movie
charts the events leading up to and beyond a big party. Feeling trapped
in the suburban tract bachelor pad, nicknamed “the Palace,” where he’s
lived with his childhood friends for years, Connie finally comes to the
conclusion that his life has to change, especially after — in a bit
stretching credibility even in a movie of heightened absurdity like
this one — his pal Sean (Samuel Child) tries to hook him up with a girl
who turns out to be the daughter of an old high-school classmate.

Despite its innate and considerable likeability in swatches, part of Lurking in Suburbia’s problem is that the character of Conrad really isn’t
the most steadfast embodiment of irresponsibility, and is thus a phony
proxy for all the navel-gazing talk on display. This wouldn’t matter as
much if the movie were more of an arms-length character study, but
Altieri sets Conrad up as a sort of modern-day Ferris Bueller,
utilizing direct address to try to ply our sympathy. While there are
some interesting characters among Conrad’s pals — gay ex-jock Danny
(Ari Zagaris, coming off as Craig Bierko’s younger brother) is notably
well sketched — and the movie gets many of the details of threadbare
20-something existence right (including the random mismatched furniture
and bare living room walls), it overall feels like a mock-plaintive
exercise in emotional manipulation, with too many bits of fading
adolescent awakening cribbed from Esquire’s infamous “Things Never to Do After 30” essay.

Lurking in Suburbia comes housed in a regular Amray case with
a gold-embossed cardboard slipcover, and is presented in letterboxed
widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions. Its English language 2.0
stereo track more than adequately handles the movie’s relatively sparse
aural demands, though the background ambience in some of the party
sequences seems purposefully, woefully under-dialed. Taking a page from
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, there’s a drunken audio commentary track
included herein, as well as a spread of eight deleted scenes and
several trailers. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)