Movie Review: Not So Revolutionary Road

Time for yet another amazing "movie review of movies I haven't even seen". This go-round, it's Revolutionary Road, starring Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, reunited for the first time since "Titanic". As in all my past reviews where I declare a movie crap and a box office bomb, I have not seen this movie. What I have seen is one 30 second TV commercial, and a print ad for the movie.

That's all, but it's enough.

Based on these slim clues, I proclaim this a monumentally stupid movie, with Leo and Kate chewing scenery like Alec Baldwin set loose in the snackbar. Also, I predict it will do crappy box office - $30 to $40 mil - but still go on to win some Oscars.

But first, the plot, and keep in mind, I know nothing about the movie. What I do know, however, is the formulaic mindset of Hollywood, the towering if fragile egos of its denizens, and the monotonous regularity with which Liberals fake sincerity.

Leo and Kate are a young couple in the 1950s, who fall in love, marry, and start a family. The initial passion wears off, however, then the marriage turns sour, then it turns into a deadly, depressing trap for both of them. Their characters talk about it endlessly over coffee, dissecting the relationship between themselves, their friends, and then themselves again for what seems like forever. They part, they reconcile, they get back together, they grow depressed again.

Neither can reconcile themselves to the 50s cliché of married life, nor draw comfort - much less joy - from it. They are both terribly sophisticated, you see; meant for bigger and better things, such as to paint, to sculpt, to write, to do momentous things. Neither does, nobody can reconcile the difference, somebody dies, everybody goes home unhappy, and all over America, coffee houses and other haunts of Liberalism will be abuzz about how this movie touched their lives. A modern day Tragedy, it will be proclaimed.

Except, of course, that that is a bunch of crap.

The Producers are hoping that what the Young Gen Xers who will see this movie will project onto the screen is themselves, albeit that the movie is set over 50 years from the present day. See, Hollywood wishes to teach America a lesson about its consumerist ways. The movie will draw sundry comparisons between the lifestyle of Gen Xers, and those of the post WWII generation. They're also laying the groundwork for justifying the radicalism of the 60s, in an attempt to start it anew.

But how to make Gen X feel guilty without actually blaming them for anything?

The trick is to project modern day Thirty-something angst into another setting. Since 1950s America is every liberal's favorite whipping boy, the 1950s it is. There will be some bilge about how consumer oriented our society was, and never mind that America had just exhausted itself with a World War and sundry other battles, including Korea. Reasonable folks might have assumed that she'd earned the right to a two-car garage, a cul-de-sac, an occasional round of golf and something resembling normalcy.

They would be wrong.

And that brings us to the inevitable trip to Europe. Now, I must say in advance that I have no idea if either Kate or Leo talks about a trip to Europe, but I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that one of them does. See, a trip to Europe is a metaphor for everything that is either right about a Liberal's life (I spent a summer in France), or wrong with it (I never made it to France). It is celebrated in our culture in movie's, books, autobiographies and biographies. Bill Clinton famously went to Europe. When Hollywood mega-stars get tired of America, they go to Europe.

What they fail to realize is that America had pretty much had its bellyful of Europe by that time, so, like so much else about this movie, that will ring false as well.

One final thought: I'm willing to guess that DiCaprio's character didn't do any military service, notwithstanding that Korea happened in the 50s. Hey, just thinking out loud here, but might that not be a source of his angst? As to Winslet, maybe she was just tired of banging into the glass ceiling.

I think both of the poor dears need a Fulbright Scholarship. It gets you away from America, and it gets you to France, that land of opportunity.

Hey, it worked wonders for Slick Willy.