Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Meet The Applegates doesn't meet much intelligence, however, it is a fun movie to watch if you just want to watch, and not think. This is not a thinking movie, unless you are thinking "What were they thinking?" while you're watching this. This movie is weird, even to my standards. The whole idea of preying mantis going incognito as humans is disturbing enough. Ed Begley Jr, in spite of it all, actually makes this all worth watching, and I'm really shocked to be admitting this, but there is almost literally nothing else to see here. The ending just got a little too ridiculous for me. I want to warn you, even though Meet The Applegates is in general a comedy, there are a few yucky scenes ( I won't spoil any of them for you, that would spoil the fun...and that's all I can see that this movie was made. For fun!) So get your giant can of RAID ready, sit back, and enjoy meeting the Applegates.

This environmentally-themed black comedy seems newly relevant due to the accelerated deforestation in the Amazon as well what has been described as a nuclear renaissance. A lot of "Meet the Applegates" (alternately called "The Applegates") is just straightforward comedy, with the insect family trying to behave like a "typical American family" in the suburbs. By extension it shows that the "all-American lifestyle" is a facade, as the family members succumb to addictions. Ed Begley Jr, Stockard Channing, Dabney Coleman and Glenn Shadix (Otho in "Beetlejuice") make the most of their roles. No, it's not the funniest movie ever, but it's got some funny stuff mixed in with the ecological message.

In the wilds of Brazil, as yet more rainforests are being cut down to make way for burger bars and other such makers of food which doesn't taste as nice as the little cardboard boxes it comes in, an unknown species of giant bug finds a children's 'Learn to Read' book which contains pictures of the 'ordinary' family. In no time, the outsized mantids are disguised as a human family and are on a mission to cause a nuclear disaster which will wipe out humanity.Though this film does have serious things to say about ecology, it is also a black comedy about the seedier side of families and married life. It captures hilariously such subjects as teenage rebellion, credit card shop-a-holics, sexless marriages and even political topics like the paranoia surrounding 'reds under the beds'. Alright, so some of the subjects tend to verge on the tasteless (and I don't think date rape is really something to laugh about), it's still a very entertaining sci-fi/comedy.

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.