Tearing apart cliches

Rating: Null/10 (20 April 2002)

It interested me to see the sheer number of reviews complaining about the use of cliches in this movie. At the same time, it amazed me how thoroughly and completely such a huge number of people could have missed the meaning.
Cliches? That's the point.
It starts with a typical happy suburban family, presenting the "image of success." And looks beyond it to see anything but happiness. People who work so hard at pretending to be things that they're not that they kill themselves emotionally.
The typical overachiever mother -- who is working so hard at repressing her own misery that you can't help but pity her. The moody daughter who refuses to smile during a steps performance -- who warms up at the slightest attention. The drug-dealing stalker -- who worships beauty in every form. The bitchy model slut -- who has no sexual experience due to overwhelming fears about her own inadequacy.
And, of course, the overworked, underappreciated father -- who becomes to an unemployed pot-smoking pedophile. And the change is exactly what he needed to be happy.
This movie is about looking behind the cliches behind the cliches. About seeing the beauty in things that seem, by societal standards, as nothing but reprehensible. And the people that missed this are perhaps the ones that needed to understand it most of all.