This film was terrible! Overrated and all that good stuff!

Rating: Null/10 (31 December 2003)

First of all for all the people who said that they didn't like this film i tip my hat to you, because unlike most people you actually saw this film for what it was, a cop out. I am probably one of the most open minded people and I watched this film with an open mind hoping and praying that it would get better every moment longer that I watched. And I'll tell you what, it didn't.
This man Lester (Kevin Spacey) is going through a midlife crisis, the highpoint of his day is when he wanks off in the shower. He lives his life in fear of doing what he wants and conforms to be the person his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) wants him to be. See she's shagging not her husband but Buddy Kaine the Real-estate King (Peter Gallagher) her business's competition. Their daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is the average misunderstood child, and her dad fantasizes about her friend Angela (Mena Suvari) so much that Jane says to Rickey (Wes Bentley), their new next door neighbor (he's her age) "It'd be nice if I was anywhere near as important to him as she is." Rickey is your average guy; his hobby is filming things, has lots of groovy high tech equipment, his parent's are a little nutty, and yet he still manages to be a very successful drug dealer. And this my friends is what Hollywood thinks your average middle class suburb is like.
I watched the film again to make sure that my inner cynic hadn't missed the point (Like the tag line: I "looked closer," and closer, and closer, and closer)I hadn't missed the point. First the fantasy scenes were overused and very cliché. Next I couldn't help but chuckle about half of what Hollywood thought it was like growing up in a middle class suburb. In fact you could say I found this film almost offending, coming from a middle class suburb myself. The characters were very unrealistic, maybe this is because everyone was over-acting, maybe... but I highly doubt it. The only character who had realistic qualities was the daughter Jane, (on Rickey being sent away)"well they can't put you away just for saying weird things," one of the only realistic statements in the entire film, but even her character lost that off-hand reality. The ending was a rushed, sloppy, mess making one after another thing fall creating a over-dramatized tragedy. The ending is predictable and the dialog is unconvincing, despite the fact that the film was sloppy seconds the soundtrack was fairly well written and constructed, but even that couldn't save it.
If you haven't seen this film I wouldn't recommend it.