Over-hyped piece of nothing

Rating: 2/10 (1 February 2000)

why? why are people impressed with this movie? i honestly can't say.
what i do know is that this movie has been carefully engineered to seem like it's making some smart critique of american life, when in fact it's really really careful not to offend even the most conservative viewers.
kevin spacey commences an amazing rebellion. he quits his job! he smokes a joint! he buys an old car! he even - be still my heart - gets a job flipping burgers. basically his rebellion is to turn into a junior high student.
at least he gets to have some fun with his character. the wife, annette bening, is nothing but a caricature. and i do mean nothing - except a few minutes in the end when she's worked into the contrived "surprise ending", which also amounts to nothing.
to make a long story short, this really is a waste of money. the people who were impressed with this should rent some GOOD movies to remind them that just because it has good actors in it, and no fart jokes, that doesn't make it a "classic". and the first movie those people should see is "sunset boulevard".
in my book, the number of good movies from dreamworks so far stays at zero. all of their productions have been either spielberg movies or box-office wannabes. now they're branching out into oscar wannabes as well. i think they should start making movies instead of god damned products.