Never thinking beyond the (white) self

Rating: 6/10 (4 August 2009)

OK, I agree with most of the glowing comments about performance and filming. However, this is a film that never thinks beyond the most precious needs and desires of the white middle-class (self-fulfillment, anti-consumerism, etc.). The Wheelers are utterly self-absorbed, narcissistic people--whom the film wants us to sympathize with. The film's themes are commonplace: youth's lost dreams, women didn't have it great, conformity is not good, the Fifties were stultifying, consumerism kills the soul, etc. BUT ... this was an extremely exciting decade from another perspective. This decade saw the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement! (As I remember, there was not one minority featured in the film, not one.) Very interesting things were happening in the labor unions during this period as well. The Wheelers (and the film itself) really had an alternative to its narrow critique: looking beyond the confines of white suburbia, the woes of mid-level corporate management, and feminist critiques. The film should have included the social and political context of the 1950s--African Americans and the working class fighting for their rights. That would have been a more devastating critique of the Wheeler's life-style, and would have made it a much more powerful movie.