Too much hype, too little art

Rating: 7/10 (2 May 2000)

This might be the best Hollywood movie of the year, but personally I doubt it. Let alone all the hype about the "best movie of the decade" etc. It's unusual, true, but not everything unusual is actually good. A snapshot of American life doesn't reveal anything new, while everybody can identify him/herself with one of those lunatics, living in an otherwise lovely neighborhood. As surrealistic as it might appear to some, it is utmostly and boringly realistic. By trying to capture every side of an average family's life, authors created a very scattered and disconnected picture, with many unexplored and thus totally unnecessary details. None of the messages is fully delivered, and I'm not even sure if there were any. The most clear one is: "look, that's you and it's your boring life and there's no way out but to die". Depressing. Occasional dream-scenes with rose petals are only adding to this depressing contrast between the real life and the dream. And still, this fruitful topic is spoiled and punctured with all the distracting characters like gays next door or the ridiculous lover - "The King". Even the histerical wife is sticking out as a sore thumb. The pretentiously phylosophical moments involving the drug-addict beauty-seeking teenager could have been developed better, with him being a seducing devil, but authors stop short of working out this theme, just as well as many other potentially interesting topics in the movie. And this is my overall impression: the great ideas and the great intentions were just hinted, mixed together, and left alone - perhaps due to the inability of the authors to cope with the enormous task they've set for themselves. The film leaves one with sad feelings: evrybody and everything is sad, and even the appearing-to-be-sarcasting hero is endlessly sad, and so is his wife and daughter, and their neighbours, and all the story. And I don't even want to see it again.