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.
