Movie Review: Revolutionary Road

At long last, the sequel to Titanic has finally arrived. 11 years after teenage girls with disposable incomes and the endurance to sit through a 3-hour film over and over and over made Titanic the highest grossing film of all time, the Phantom Menace of Teeny Tamponia makes its way into theaters as now those teenage girls are college graduates STILL looking for jobs and their little sisters text their BFF’s about how Robert Pattinson is so not hot enough to play Edward.

Thing more things change...

We follow Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) as they move into their lives in placid 50’s suburbia, determined not to let what happened on the big white boat ruin their chance for happiness. So many extras, digital and other wise, died so they could be together.
You might say that Jack died at the end of Slumdog Millionaire ending, in which Jack swims up from the depths of the icy sea and finds Rose “because it is written”.
Far-fetched? Yes, bordering on insipid, but you want to feel good so you’ll believe anything no matter how bathetic.

You might ask how Jack and Rose could still look so relatively youthful considering the Titanic sunk in 1912 and the sequel takes place in the 50’s. The answer is simple. After the Titanic sunk every other goddam song on the radio was Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. Jack and Rose took it upon themselves to find Ms. Dion somewhere in Canada. Dion looked upon them with sizable recognition. Jack grabbed Celine Dion from behind while Rose crammed sand into her mouth until her belly was the size of an oil barrel. This did not kill Celine Dion, until a moment later when Rose kicked her in the stomach. The aftermath was rather dusty, although it did do the trick.

Then Rose and Jack drank her blood and gained perpetual youth.

The Canadian Mounties were after Rose and Jack with a vengeance, (‘cuz you don’t mess with Celine Dion in Canada) but they avoided capture by walking into a Canadian Mounties office and asked what the best way to avoid the Canadian Authorities was. The Head Canadian in charge was so helpful that he printed them out directions from Canadian Mapquest and even provided them with an SUV. Canadians are so darned helpful, and their vehicles have such great mileage. Jack and Rose also got free health care and Raptors season tickets.

4 hours later they crossed the border into America, but they had to change their names to avoid capture. Jack and Rose’s new Names: Frank and April Wheeler and they now live in a house in the prestigious no-minority-in-sight-unless-they’re-trimming-or-cleaning-something Revolutionary Hills Estates.

And so Revolutionary Road begins...

Frank (Leo) and April (Kate) are in a loveless marriage, filled with fights that cut deep as only people who have known each other so long know how to do. Was there ever love in this marriage? Possibly, but then DiCaprio did Celebrity and The Beach, and Winslet did The Holiday and The Life of David Gale. Pretty much everything disintegrated from there.

Frank has a job he hates selling machines or something appropriately vague like that. He’d quit, but he’s got mouths to feed and he sticks with the self-imposed torture, because that’s what a man does, dammit. He does find the time to tap a young secretary on his 30th birthday. How nice.

April is a little bit more forthcoming about her distaste for the stale disturbia of suburbia, as it’s a far cry from where they envisioned themselves when they got married and they were eager to savor life. Now they simply exist, and even that they’re not doing too well.

From a well-placed flashback, April has an idea. Move to gay Paree, where Frank can “find” himself and she could support the family as a nurse. Revolutionary ideas, a woman working, a man not working, in these rigid 50’s but ones they’re willing to try to save their sanities. To save their lives.

But can they break out of their self-imposed ruts to let themselves free?

Yes.

Everything ends happily ever after and Frank and April live the lives they always wanted and fulfill their dreams as few people ever do. Frank stars in The Departed while April is in Heavenly Creatures.

Kidding, of course. This movie is about as joyous as the Concentration Camp section with the life-size Holocaust Diorama at the It’s A Small World After All ride at Disneyland.

Revolutionary Road can be depressing, yes. But does that mean it’s good? Yes, of course. It’s very good and at times cowgirl-straddles greatness before flipping it into doggy-style with one efficient motion, but it’s something you have to be in the mood for. If you leave this movie happier than when you walked into it, then you are a truly sick individual...or your life sucks by comparison, which I certainly hope it doesn’t because I like to read your personal mail and it sounds like you’re doing okay

It’ll be on dozens of top 10 of 2008 lists for the simple fact that it deserves to be. If you need something life-affirming, then go watch Bolt or Marley and Me or something else involving someone bonding with a pet or implausibly winning on a game show. You may never want to see it again, but you owe it to yourself to see Revolutionary Road at least once.

What works about Revolutionary Road-

1) In 3 scenes, great stage actor Michael Shannon (Bug, Bad Boys 2) steals the funniest scenes of the movie, even though you might not be laughing as you watch them. Yes, John’s delivery may be a little coarse (“I’m glad I’m not gonna be that kid”), but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily wrong. Other than some lessons in impulse control, you really wonder why he was sent to the hospital. I mean, look at his parents.

2) Kate and Leo- part of Titanic’s success was/is their chemistry together, and of course that’s on full display here as they let the verbal fireworks explode, defuse and diffuse. It’s a plus that they’re 11 years older now and have settled into their looks because weren’t there sequences in Titanic where they looked like wayward brother and sister reunited?

3) Production designer Kristi Zea’s Stepford neighborhood is creepy in its stark angles and pastels. If you saw something like the houses at Revolutionary Estates now, you’d think this burg was infested with child molesters or traveling bible salesmen child molesting as part of a church activity and you’d move back to the Amityville house where things, by comparison, are more peaceful.

4) Kathy Bates nails the part of a 50’s matron, versed in non-confrontation, denial, and the other tics of an era where children were seen and not heard, dad went to work and mom took care of the house...and anybody who veered from that was seen a ‘bohemian’ and looked at with an askew eye. She always looks like she’s half a foot away from cracking completely (“He’s not well”).

5) The use of a hearing aid that condemns an entire era’s way of living.

6) A scene at a Breakfast table that’ll make you squirm in your seat. Minimal background music used so as to not hammer your head with what you’re supposed to be feeling.

7) The irony of seeing Kate Winslet’s character April as someone who can’t act.

What doesn’t work-

1) As Great as Kate Winslet is, April is too similar to the unsatisfied wife she played in Little Children 2 years ago.

2) A drawn-out climax that should have been trimmed by about a quarter. The audiences knows what’s coming, so prolonging it becomes more frustrating that anything else.

3) Those of you looking for your Billy Zane fix may still have to resort to his “special appearance” in Bloodrayne to sate yourself. If, however, you have immediate access to Bloodrayne, I feel sorry for you.

Overall. Director Sam Mendes made his Academy Award winning debut 9 years ago trolling the angst of suburban white folks in American Beauty. He treads similar ground in Revolutionary Road but to much greater effect and making it his best movie ever. See it because your lives might not suck by comparison. See it because of the Kate Winslet films out there, this one is better than The Reader. See it because The Wrestler hasn’t come out of Limited Release yet and there’s nothing else out there worth watching that you haven’t seen yet.

Don’t see it if you’re suicidal...because this movie ain’t gonna help. At all.

So, for those of you that have grandparents that bitch and moan about the state of the world today and how things were so much more hunky-fucking-dory back in the “old days” and how it was inconceivable to have a Negro in the White House, remember Revolutionary Road and that the 50’s sucked in their own ways as well.
Put that grandparent in the back of your car and tell them you’re going to take them to a “home” because if things were so gosh-darn great then maybe they’d like to spend some time with their own kind. Then drive to an abandoned wherehouse downtown and kick them to the sidewalk before they have a chance to say anything, making sure you yell out “A minority Porter will be with you in a moment. Probably black or Mexican, but destined to make you uncomfortable.”
Proceed to drive off.
Go to a theater and see Gran Torino.
Return after the movie. When said terrified grandparent ambles back to your vehicle, tell him/her that you remembered that the “Home” isn’t open on weekends and that you’ll both be there bright and early Monday morning and that President Obama has enacted the White Slave Lottery to be held every Wednesday on MSNBC after Rachel Maddox

And watch Grandpa or Grandma Whiny clam the fuck up. The only sound being their dentures rattling in abject terror. You feel good about yourself because hey, you just saw Gran Torino.

Have a Happy New Year Everyone ☺