Citizens Band

As in Melvin and Howard, Demme's genuine curiosity about the eccentricities hidden within the most seemingly ordinary of American lives ensures a largely engaging slab of cinematic graffiti. The populace of script-writer Paul Brickman's small town includes a hooker on wheels, a cattle-truck-driving bigamist whose two wives meet up by accident, and at the centre, the excellent LeMat as a CB vigilante clobbering misusers of the airwaves, his chief misery being a hopeless attachment to a near-gaga father who only comes to life at his radio mike. The film uses the CB craze as a metaphor for lack of human communication, and proceeds in a somewhat elliptical manner, but the alternation of moments of black humour and funny-sad incidents lends it a considerable charm.