How honest can this movie be when the children are mere props?

Rating: 2/10 (6 June 2009)

Hey, Hollywood, here's a question: If life is dull in the suburbs, why doesn't it occur to you that movies set in the suburbs will be dull, too? Because they are. Revolutionary Road is yet another mildly decadent, inert melodrama exploring what writers seem to regard as soul-dead all-white suburbia (American Beauty, The Ice Storm, Little Children, Pleasantville, etc. etc.). In my experience, suburban people are not stereotypically dull.
But dullness isn't this flick's only, or primary, problem. Dishonesty is. In fact, it's hard to say what the most dishonest part is. It might be plot devices like the two Wheeler offspring, who are treated as nothing more than props, yet we're supposed to believe that the third child will matter? Or the other plot device, the mentally ill mathematician, who seems to exist purely to say inflammatory things (he gets to, he's crazy) that let director Sam Mendes give Winslet and DiCaprio chances for histrionics.
But I think the most dishonest thing is Winslet's character, April. A moody hypocrite with bleach-blonde hair and coal-black eyebrows, she baits her husband into drastically changing their lives by following an absurd pipe dream (she doesn't even research these "secretarial jobs in Paris" that she talks about), saying that moving to Europe is for his sake when obviously it's just as much, if not more, for her own.
Clearly, we're supposed to have sympathy for April. That's what's dishonest, because nothing about her actions merits sympathy. Both April and Frank are unhappy in the 'burbs (what movie protagonist isn't?), but when Frank chooses to stay and face their responsibilities-- as well as tacitly admit that they aren't artists or writers or actors who have a Bohemian future in Paris-- April becomes a shrew. Along the way, she also contemplates a self-administered abortion (never mind the risks, or Frank's opinion, he's only her husband and the father). April is as selfish, callow and emotionally constipated as it is possible to be. For instance, whenever Frank wants to talk about little matters, like, oh, say, the fact their dinner party just broke up into a near fist-fight, or that she's taken to sleeping on the couch(!!), she retorts, "Why do you want to discuss EVERYTHING all the time?" Coward that she is, she wants to run away from her problems, to Paris; short of that, she walks away from her husband when he wants to work things out. I'm all in favor of walking away-- but from this movie, not from life's problems.