Don't be fooled - it is largely cliché and trash

Rating: 3/10 (27 April 2008)

Ever just wanted to tell you boss where he can shove the job he's given you? Ever wanted to yell at your overly-domesticated wife about her ridiculous artificial life? Ever felt like you can't be buggered with it all you just wanna have fun and "live it up"? Are you a toe-tag liberal with the view that the world is one giant fake, right-wing, consumerist society with not one shred of purity and genuine happiness? Well I suppose this film is for you then! So why don't I give it a 1 out of 10? To tell you the truth, it's because the film is very clever in the way that it goes about fooling people into believing that this is some sort of deep, artistic, multi-layered critique of modern suburban life with strong messages. In reality, it is riddled with cliché and contrivances, with a touch of absurd humor, but interestingly, it is put together well enough to disguise these major pitfalls. The Hollywood establishment fell for it as well and showered it with Oscars and praise.
Hollywood has a flair for contrived dramas and this was not exception. Take, for instance, the time frame of the story. During this one mystical two or three month period, every member of the family had enormous life-changing encounters / experiences that seemed to click together with other elements of the film a bit too perfectly. The fact that Benning was having an affair and, business-wise, was jumping into bed with the opposition at the same time that her husband (Spacey) was going through a period of liberation from a supposed prison of disenchantment seemed a little too convenient, wouldn't you say? Around this time, their daughter was going through her first serious relationship which coincided neatly with the disintegration of her parent's marriage. The whole setup of the story was as ludicrously contrived as the sidewalks and nature strips on their street.
If that wasn't bad enough, every single last character in this film was as clichéd as they come. Spacey's character was a mid-level exec who finds no meaning in his life or work and does nothing more than has a silly mid-life crisis that is, admittedly, rather humorously scripted in some parts. Then we have Benning who parades all the traits of an unsuccessful, yet ambitious business woman, whose world revolves around matching the cushions with the sofa and pathetic self-motivating tirades. Oh, and of course - despite the fact that she has a moderately stable and semi-functional family, under her strong and happy exterior lies a deeply lost and emotionally unstable individual. Oh please! The daughter has found the man of her dreams and of course, she is going to run away to the big city with him. Lord help us! Take a walk next door and their lies an aggressive, uncompromising, conservative, ex-military father who, of course, is a repressed homosexual. His wife keeps the house in impeccable order and, of course, is sad and lifeless. The son is, of course, rebellious and unpopular, but is full of wisdom and perfect insight. The beautiful girl, the object of Spacey's obsession, is superficially a hard nosed self-superior bitch who, ostensibly, is not afraid to "sleep" her way to the top and low and behold, she turns out to be a virgin with insecurities. Blah blah blah dee dah! Aside from such clichés and stereotypes dripping from the characters, they acting is uneven and some aspects were, ironically, very stereotypically "loud & absurd....& American." Benning's character seemed totally overblown as did the conservative ex-military neighbor. The actor playing his drug dealing son gave once of Hollywood's most wooden performances and that ridiculous, so-called symbolic, try-hard artistic touch of a bloody plastic bag blowing around in the wind was laughable. Combine the acting with the script and overall, the characters were completely overdone.
Some of the dialog was actually rather good and various parts were admittedly entertaining. But overall, it is an extremely overrated film and, to borrow the tag line, if you "look closer" you'll see that contrivance and cliché is the secret ingredient here, but overall it lacks style, sophistication, subtlety and most of all, realism.
When I look closer, all I think is that some people believe what they see and .. well.. others just tend to see what they believe.