Everything This Movie Has to Say Has Been Said Before and Said Better

Rating: 5/10 (14 January 2009)

The subject of suburban misery and malaise, and the myth of the American dream, has been dealt with so frequently in movies, television and literature that you may wonder what more there is to say about the topic. If "Revolutionary Road" is any example, the answer is: not much. Indeed, the whole time I was watching this strangely insubstantial film from director Sam Mendes, the only thing I could think of were all the other movies I've seen that have dealt with the same themes and dealt with them better.
Frank and April Wheeler are the miserably married couple at the center of this story. Frank, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, goes off to work in a featureless anthill of a company, diddling the occasional office girl on the side. April stays home and frets over the acting career that never materialized for her and rebelling against the stifling sameness of suburbia that she feels she's better than. Most of the film consists of monotonous scenes of these two screaming at each other. I guess it's meant to be a sort of modern-day "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", the story of a married couple who could be helping one another but instead decide to tear each other apart, except that the material isn't nearly as interesting as Edward Albee's play, and neither are the characters.
For "Revolutionary Road" to work, we have to really understand why April is so unhappy, and that's something the film doesn't tell us. Kate Winselt tries awfully hard, but she can't make much of this rather unlikable character. She didn't have my sympathy because I never understood her problem. I understand suburban unhappiness in general, but I didn't understand it as presented here. DiCaprio has the easier time of it, because Frank it turns out isn't all that unhappy with his life, and pretends to be so largely for April's benefit. The film doesn't establish much about these two before they met or about the early days of their marriage. We're supposed to feel emotions about them in a vacuum without any context. I didn't feel anything.
There's not much relief from DiCaprio and Winslet, as one or the other is in virtually every frame of the movie. There are a couple of recognizable actors in supporting roles, namely Kathy Bates as a real estate agent friend and Michael Shannon as her bonkers son. This character is wedged awkwardly into the narrative as the movie's id, shouting out truths everyone else is trying to avoid having to admit, but Shannon's performance is over the top and I didn't know what I was supposed to make of him.
With wonderful films like "Far from Heaven," "The Hours," "All That Heaven Allows" and "Little Children" (which stars Winslet in a stunning turn, no less) and the cable series "Mad Men" exploring the same themes as "Revolutionary Road" but much more capably, there's really no reason to waste your time or money on this gloomy, depressing movie that has nothing to say. It's not an awful movie, but at the same time it has very little to recommend it.
Grade: C