The fix is in

Rating: 3/10 (17 September 1999)

With Critics clamoring for the season's `worthy' picture you will be hearing much hype about this film and the look and the acting and its freshness. Warning don't get worked up over it because the end experience is as empty as Lester Burnham's life, the one portrayed by Kevin Spacey, who sets forth to fill out the stereotype of the all American WASP father of 9 to 5 is a vacuum. We have all seen this done better in The Ice Storm and with more originality in Blue Velvet. Spacey deserves all the praise that will be coming down the pike on his performance here and it is entirely on his shoulders that the film is carried with let downs from Bening and Birch. Be on the look out for key words like American suburban, middle- class, midlife crisis, and dysfunction along with psychological, sexual, sociological to keep popping up when this film is mentioned. These themes drive critics wild but Brit. Alan Ball does nothing more with it than take its long history in film, theater and lit and rearrange the parts, a formula for success on Broadway these days so Hollywood is not far behind. Skip it unfortunately you won't for long escape the vapid raves filled with hyperbole