The Census TakerEvery so often, a census is taken, collecting microdata on the populous, getting pertinent information together, to get a better enumeration of...well, us. It can be argued that with all that statistical information, there are breaches in privacy as a result of that data acquisition. The Census Taker takes that concept to a cynically absurd extreme, as the invasive census taker for the town of Appleton, Mr. Harvey McGraw (Garrett Morris) visits house after house, pressuring citizens and seducing housewives to complete his "duly appointed task" for the federal government. That is, until he stumbled into the Dade household.
|
|
George and Martha Dade (Greg Mullavey and Meredith MacRae, respectively) are a married couple with two kids, the perfect nuclear family in suburbia, getting ready for an evening get together with their friends, Pete (Timothy Bottoms) and Eva (Austen Tayler), when just before dinner with the kids, McGraw comes calling, pushing his way into their household, under threat of misdemeanor charges for obstruction of his duties. Tensions are already a little high for George and Martha--who jokingly and knowingly emulate a scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which features a couple like them...even with the same names. But barring the arguments of the Dades, McGraw asks his simple questions with passive-aggressive curtness and segues into full-blown intrusiveness, with interrogations about their alcohol consumption and use of marital aids...even measuring their bed width and going through the medicine cabinet. As McGraw pushes well beyond their breaking point, one thing leads to another and...well, McGraw gets shot. I mean, all good dark comedies need a dead body; this movie, too. Kidding aside, George and Martha compile their best efforts to try to evade police involvement--or at least their own prosecution--and bandy about hair-brained schemes to justify why McGraw got shot. And wouldn't you know it? Just as they're about to come to a consensus on the census taker, Pete and Eva show up. Now, Pete's revealed to be a cop, and George and Martha do all they can to avoid spilling the beans about the late Mr. McGraw. But tensions are running hot, further revved up, because it turns out that Pete has a yen for Martha, and George for Eva, and they've been mutually unfaithful with the other's spouse. And when push comes to shove, and the cards are laid out on the table, each of the four of them finds their loyalties put to the test, and we see how they truly cast their lots. (Yeesh, that's a lot of staid metaphor in that previous sentence.) Oh, and George and Martha's obnoxious kids are off robbing ATMs with a computer, for some reason. Frankly, The Census Taker is a weird movie, even for a dark comedy; but there's this sense of a demented charm to the kind of childlike narrative about an adult couple who try to dispose of a body, dealing with dinner parties with friends, affairs, and going up the river, which makes it charming in that perspective. The bizarre musical score by experimental band The Residents underscores that unsettling strangeness which is the movie, more than even the plot.
Garrett Morris may only be in The Census Taker for about half of the film--you can guess which half--but he leaves an impact, and not just where he lands in the Dades' foyer. As the impertinent census deputy, he excels at pushing further and further into George and Martha's lives, making himself quite a pest in their household...although if their kids' testimony of their telescopic reconnaissance is any indication, McGraw is quite adept at other things, like "The Exorcist", "Bucking Mare", and "Ninety-Six", no further description needed. Garrett Morris became recognizable from his contributions to Saturday Night Live as an original cast member; furthermore, other cast members in The Census Taker--notably Greg Mullavey and Meredith MacRae--have histories as actors from television. Between the cast and the suburban setting, the film has the trappings of a prime time sitcom taking a decidedly bizarre turn, as if "All in the Family" sniffed some bad paint thinner one night. Appleton is supposed to represent a slice of America, hence the census; but if Appleton represents us, what kind of portrayal of us is it supposed to be? It is swimming in those hammy cliches of suburban life--the affairs, the spoiled kids, the mousy husband henpecked by the career-driven wife, and so on. Maybe these two-dimensional caricatures are just that, the kind of impressions a census taker would get from just looking at the statistics of small town America, looking to extrapolate that data into various characters, based on those percentages. But every so often, popping out of those predictable personas, the real George and Martha, Pete and Eva emerge, showing those insane moments behind their demographic masks, such as when Eva and Martha play their little joke on the boys, telling their "story" about their grandmother on the rollercoaster, eating a hot dog; it is a cruel joke, but lends verisimilitude (Pete and Martha know that word) to the girls' even more sociopathic response at the finale. Oodles of silly, odd moments make the pacing of The Census Taker trot along with the kind of jocular lunacy which is like having a dinner party with your friends and spiking the bloody marys with LSD...now, there's an idea...
Recommended for: Fans of a demented, weird comedy about killing an obnoxious census taker--haven't we all had that dream? A slice of true American suburbs, left out in the sun too long; but the off-flavor is really the charm that makes The Census Taker such a playful film.
Garrett Morris may only be in The Census Taker for about half of the film--you can guess which half--but he leaves an impact, and not just where he lands in the Dades' foyer. As the impertinent census deputy, he excels at pushing further and further into George and Martha's lives, making himself quite a pest in their household...although if their kids' testimony of their telescopic reconnaissance is any indication, McGraw is quite adept at other things, like "The Exorcist", "Bucking Mare", and "Ninety-Six", no further description needed. Garrett Morris became recognizable from his contributions to Saturday Night Live as an original cast member; furthermore, other cast members in The Census Taker--notably Greg Mullavey and Meredith MacRae--have histories as actors from television. Between the cast and the suburban setting, the film has the trappings of a prime time sitcom taking a decidedly bizarre turn, as if "All in the Family" sniffed some bad paint thinner one night. Appleton is supposed to represent a slice of America, hence the census; but if Appleton represents us, what kind of portrayal of us is it supposed to be? It is swimming in those hammy cliches of suburban life--the affairs, the spoiled kids, the mousy husband henpecked by the career-driven wife, and so on. Maybe these two-dimensional caricatures are just that, the kind of impressions a census taker would get from just looking at the statistics of small town America, looking to extrapolate that data into various characters, based on those percentages. But every so often, popping out of those predictable personas, the real George and Martha, Pete and Eva emerge, showing those insane moments behind their demographic masks, such as when Eva and Martha play their little joke on the boys, telling their "story" about their grandmother on the rollercoaster, eating a hot dog; it is a cruel joke, but lends verisimilitude (Pete and Martha know that word) to the girls' even more sociopathic response at the finale. Oodles of silly, odd moments make the pacing of The Census Taker trot along with the kind of jocular lunacy which is like having a dinner party with your friends and spiking the bloody marys with LSD...now, there's an idea...
Recommended for: Fans of a demented, weird comedy about killing an obnoxious census taker--haven't we all had that dream? A slice of true American suburbs, left out in the sun too long; but the off-flavor is really the charm that makes The Census Taker such a playful film.