sexist and unrealistic

Rating: 1/10 (24 August 2001)

This movie grossed an incredible $336 million worldwide, won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1999, and occupies the remarkably lofty position of the ninth best movie ever made on the IMDB Top 250. And frankly, I can't understand why. It's a well-made and well-acted movie, but I find the story offensive and irritating in many respects.
(1) Setting. This is a minor point, but the setting is very inconsistently handled. Obviously the movie was actually filmed in the LA area, but there are references to "those days when it's a minute away from snowing" (which a Southern Californian would obviously not say) and to Jane and Ricky escaping to New York City. On the other hand, the potential homebuyers complain to Carolyn that the house she is selling was supposed to have a "lagoon" in back. Well, in the eastern U.S., realtors don't talk about lagoons - that is a very SoCal term.
More importantly, I found it incredibly irritating how the Burnhams live in a huge, lavishly decorated, modern home on the exclusive "Robin Hood Trail." This house is worth easily $1 million. How, exactly, did they afford it, given that Lester has been a technical writer for an advertising magazine (working in a small cubicle) for fourteen years and Carolyn is a struggling realtor who personally cleans the crappy houses she is trying to sell? And how do the Fittses manage to afford the equally fancy house next door on a Marine colonel's salary? Only the Jims (the tax attorney and anesthesiologist) belong in this neighborhood. This phoniness undercuts the story (and anything it might have to "say" about America) from the beginning, in my opinion.
(2) Sexism. There are four female characters - Carolyn, Jane, Angela, and Mrs. Fitts. Carolyn is portrayed as cold and mean - two qualities that just happen to go along with the fact that she is also ambitious and hard-working. She also, as we see, does the cooking (and undoubtedly the rest of the housework), but Lester is still dissatisfied with her. He calls her a "bloodless, money-grubbing freak." Well, sorry, but I just didn't agree with that. I thought Carolyn was the most sympathetic character in the movie. I never understood what Lester was so upset about at the beginning of the story. Why did he hate Carolyn? Because she wouldn't have sex with him? That seemed to be what it boiled down to. And because her gardening clogs matched the handle on her pruning shears. Why didn't he admire her for her success as a broker, appreciate her efforts around the house, be supportive of her, instead of falling for a seventeen-year-old girl? It really bothered me that when he gave examples of the person Carolyn used to be and (in his opinion) should become again, he talked about her faking seizures at frat parties and running to the roof of an apartment building to flash traffic helicopters. So instead of an attractive, hard-working, responsible woman in her early forties, he wants a sexualized nut case? That doesn't resonate with me.
Then there's Jane. The first thing we learn about her is that she wants breast enlargement surgery and that she's secretly saved up money to pay for it. And that's about it. We learn she hates her parents, although at the start of the movie it's not clear why. I'm sorry, but in the real world, kids (even teenagers) don't just hate their parents without any reason, and here the reason isn't shown. We see a photograph from a few years earlier when they were a happy family - so the suggestion, I think, is that the problems started when Carolyn got her real estate license. I find that a pretty sinister message - "when Mom stops being just a housewife, the American family goes to hell."
For Jane as for Carolyn, their male counterparts get the best lines. It's Ricky and then later Lester who give the movie's thematic speech about there being "so much beauty in the world." Jane and Carolyn just play off the men. Jane never really does anything to justify Ricky's fascination with her - it's apparently based solely on her striking and unusual looks.
And that brings us to Angela, played by Mena Suvari. Any movie that portrays a 40-year-old man obsessed with an 18-year-old girl (the friend of his daughter) as a hero has got something wrong with it. There is no excuse for that. I don't think it's "normal" for a man that age to have that kind of obsession. He might notice the attractiveness of such a young woman, but to become obsessed with her is disgusting, in my opinion. At least when Carolyn had an affair, it was with a man her own age.
And what is the one thing we know about Angela as a person (aside from her looks)? That she wants to be a model. So of our two young female characters, one wants breast implants and the other wants to be a model. Nice image of women for the future.
I don't have space to get into Mrs. Fitts, the other female character, who is like a catatonic version of a Stepford Wife.
(3) Homophobia. Colonel Fitts was a pretty bad character too. We're supposed to believe that this guy, in his late 40s, has been through an entire career in the Marines without ever facing his homosexuality, even within himself, and that he deals with it by being murderously homophobic, physically and emotionally abusive to his son, and part of some Nazi secret society? Nice image of gay people too.