Well-made but ultimately pointless film.

Rating: 4/10 (31 January 2017)

This film is well acted and well directed, but what is the point of the story?
It's not a particularly interesting take on the suburban dystopia. What it says is all cliché, there is nothing new. Cheating wife, husband with terrible job, sexual frustration, bored teenager, yeah, nothing new so far. Extremist neighbor who is a closeted, self-hating homosexual, this is also old. The daughter is friends with a moody emo teen that wants to run away and sexually promiscuous and morally vacuous friend girlfriend.
It plays like theater but it's not really funny.
It attempts to be subversive but it really isn't. A mid-life crisis is not really subversive in any way.
A more interesting story would be if Lester's acting out was expanded upon. For example, he works in a fast food store. Let him become friends with the teens there, sharing joints during lunch break, exchanging non-elevator music, etc. Let him become friends with a bunch of punks and misfits, showing his own sense of being an outcast. Maybe the teens are using him, maybe he's using them. Maybe they think he's cool, maybe they don't, or maybe they don't care and don't judge him and that's what he likes. Maybe he uses the settlement money to fund Ricky Fits' first film. Maybe he meets a young girl at the burger joint.
I'm just throwing ideas around to explain the lack of consequence in this film. He quits his job, his wife gets angry, but there's no consequence. He works at a fast food joint, sees his wife cheating, still no consequence. Nothing changes from these life-changing events.
The ending appears to be an intertwining of all the subplots, a domino effect of sorts, but it really isn't. Rejecting the colonel's sexual advances resulted in the colonel killing him. It's a random event. There is no buildup to it. The colonel coming to Lester comes out of nowhere, the kiss came out of nowhere and that's it.
Highly overrated film.