Beautifully grotesque

Rating: Null/10 (25 May 2001)

Though it's fashionable to find this movie artistic and meaningful, it's mostly a collage of other films. The essence of the movie seems derivative of the very first scene in "Blue Velvet" where the camera starts up high over a sleepy suburb, then descends slowly until it moves into the grass and finds a festering hole full of bugs. The message being, of course, that beneath the clean sterile exterior is a messy, dark, and unpleasant actual existence.
The film techniques were extremely reminiscent of "Risky Business" with the lingering closeups--and the rose petals evoked the camera shot in that movie (far better) of the hose slowly penetrating a large shrub.

The movie itself takes it's central plot from "Lolita", self consciously so. The real problem is not with the movie per se, rather it is done a disservice by the wacky response to it. This isn't the best movie of the decade, it didn't deserve best picture, and it isn't a stark revelation about the secret heart of the American family.
What it is is a reasonably funny movie about a rather pathetic middle American middle aged father who has let his personal crisis get away from him. In fact, the real underlying message of the movie, one I've not seen before, is that the American family is being deeply hurt by a modern culture that has rejected personal responsibility. Spacey methodically rejects everything that is supposed to make life worth living: work, family, religion; and embraces teen sex, drugs and the cult of the body. What does it ultimately get him?
This movie is kind of a throwback to the seventies with movies like "The Last Married Couple in America", "Serial", and "Middle Age Crazy". It's worth a look, but for those who start spouting about the MEANING and the ARTISTRY, I'd advise them to get a life.