A guy's wish-fulfilment fantasy with misogynist undertones

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2002)

I watched this film for the second time, and was left feeling very ambivalent. On the one hand, there is so much to admire: the witty, literate script; Kevin Spacey's completely persuasive performance; the support work of Chris Cooper, Thora Birch, Mena Suvari and the marvellously oily Peter Gallagher; and some great cinematography.
The fly in the ointment was a feeling I was left with with that the main female characters (or certainly three of them) in the film are crude caricatures, in contrast to the complex and nuanced characters played by Spacey, Wes Bentley and even the seemingly straight-out-of-central-casting Chris Cooper. Most obviously there is Carolyn, whom Lester calls at one point a dried-up old bitch, or something like that. She is portrayed as hysterical, shrewish, over-ambitious, pathetically insecure and domineering, and is pretty much without any redeeming features. She even has lousy taste in music! Lester has come to hate her, and my feeling was that the audience was being invited to feel contempt and hatred for her too. I found this extremely grating, although this was not a criticism of Annette Bening's acting, more of the script and direction.
Then there is Angela, the would be slut, who has a mind like a sewer and is completely shallow and obsessed with appearances. At the end, one sentence from Ricky is enough to burst her bubble of self-delusion and send her crying into Lester's arms. Admittedly, her last scene does show a different side to her, but it is one that has been occasioned by an insult from a man and then nurtured by another man. All-in-all, a cipher.
And what of Ricky's hapless mother? Some very imaginative suggestions have been made on these message boards to explain why she is the way she is, but I think these suggestions are being overly generous to the filmmakers, as to me none of it is in the script. She seemed like a pitiable, catatonically stricken woman who was just there.
Jane is easily the most complex and fully realised of the female characters; even here, though, I found myself wondering whether this was simply down to the fact that Thora Birch is so damn good that she wrung more subtlety out of the character than was originally there (witness her superb performance in Ghost World for another exhibition of her brilliance). I found there was a dissonance between what's in the script (she's a f*ck-up) and what I saw on screen, which is in many ways the film's most sympathetic character. She even says more than once that she's a bad person, and that it isn't surprising she's so screwed up, with such weird parents.

Certainly, Lester's attitude towards Jane is pretty contemptuous, until right at the end. He only sides with her when he's battering his wife's taste in music. It's as if his daughter is just another woman put on earth to make his life a misery. He laments that she would never confide in him, but never asks himself about his own responsibility and his part in her upbringing. But hey, this film isn't about a dysfunctional family, it's about one man, the worm that turns against his oppressors and becomes a hero. Sod the women, this is a guy's wish-fulfilment fantasy. Cheer on Lester Burnham, give Spacey an Oscar (and it is a terrific turn from him) - the film still leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.