This is first and foremost a Backlash film (referring to Susan Faludi's book) where Carolyn, the wife in the film, is a cliched, slamming portrayal of what happens when a woman tries to compete in business--she of course must be shown to have destroyed her relationship with her husband; she must be full of self-hate and pitiful misery. We learn nothing about this thin-as-cardboard character from the husband-wife confrontations except that it is all her fault, that she somehow called a halt to their sex life. Why is never asked, or what was the husband's part in this matter that he would supposedly be an integral part of. And of course the conclusion of her competition against her business rival is to capitulate to the sexual level and go to bed with him. In fact, none the female characters in this film are allowed to act on their own, only to react to male characters. A film that really wanted to do something different would have followed the two riot grrrls who pop up in one high school scene making cutting comments, but no such luck.

The rest of the characters don't get much thickness added to them along the way, either. For example, what exactly Ricky, the strange guy next door, is supposed to be, is never resolved at all. Anyone who has known or been a teenager in Ricky's shoes-- with a cold, hyper-disciplined militaristic father who beats him and sends him to a mental institution, and with an out-of-it (Prozac-whacked?) acquiescent mother--would know that Ricky's detachment is completely superficial, and that there are boiling emotions inside. Yet Ricky remains an absurdly serene figure throughout the film, even after getting pummeled yet again by his father. Either Ricky really IS the "psycho" that other characters label him, someone with big emotional troubles pushed down so deep as to be a physical danger to others or himself--a conclusion the film otherwise leads us away from with its sympathetic portrayal--or, more likely, he is simply a poorly drawn character. He has company in this film.

Speaking of Prozac, Hollywood is probably slapping itself on the back for daring to depict a tolerant view of marijuana in a major film, but it flubbed this one, too. It portrays pot as either a way to make bundles of cash for the Ricky character, or a means to pure escapism/regression for Lester. Through the Ricky character, pot is used to yet again reinforce America's money-love mania and get-rich-quick fantasies, and through Lester, pot is a magic release from all conflicts both inner and outer. Really daring would have to been showing pot for what it is, an innocuous if often lazy-making substance that is widespread throughout the country--and maybe touching on the draconian drug laws that constantly put everyday people in jail.

Of the many other repellent aspects of this film, here is a short list:
--What a condescending lie to show a minimum-wage fast-food job as breezy, effortless or in any way comforting and humanizing work, as the film does when middle-class Lester retreats to one.
--Middle-aged hero of the film Lester chooses not to have sex with his daughter's teenage friend Angela simply because she's a virgin--not because she's a troubled, unhappy, vulnerable wreck and a child.
--How many guys in the audience are just getting off on seeing Angela's forbidden teenaged breasts and fantasizing about not stopping themselves?
--Is it at all believable that control-freak wife Carolyn would decide to soberly and premeditatedly kill her husband and send herself to jail for a couple decades?
--How horrible for the film to show Lester coolly inventing a sexual-harassment case against his employer. It sneers at all the people who have been harassed at work and try to get some justice done. Imagine the same scene, but with a black man inventing racial slurs and attacks at his workplace in order to get a free ride, to get a better idea of how grotesque is this part of the film.
--Is anyone else tired of the white people in big houses thing?
--The film, having teetered in its trying, finally crashes to the side of dreck with Lester's moment-of-death spiel of enlightenment, by telling the audience what to think of what they have just seen, instead of letting them ponder it for themselves. The spiel distracts from the deadly-violence-in-America point of the film, and the accompanying images are Hallmark-hokey (and how does he see himself in childhood memories anyway?)