This movie is fucked in terms of me ever remembering it. Movies are coming at it from every side. Its title is too easy to confuse with the 2007 movie, Reservation Road. The look and period of the movie is far too easy to confuse with Far from Heaven. And, it’s too easy to confuse it with the other prestige drama Kate Winslet starred in that year, The Reader. It really doesn’t help that Winslet got Lead Actress nominations for Revolutionary Road that season before the Oscars switched to a Lead Actress nod for The Reader instead.
All that confusion is pretty fitting too. Revolutionary Road isn’t that interesting. Just suburban malaise in a different decade. It’s odd how, despite his All-American boyish looks, Leonardo DiCaprio is incapable of playing an everyman. I can’t watch this movie and think he’s a guy who actually wants that promotion. Kate Winslet fits a little better in the housewife role, primarily because of how much she rebels against it. It’s hard for me to believe that character stuck with the family life as long as she did though. She feels like someone who would have a scheme like the Paris move every couple of years. The movie never sells me on how the two leads made their concessions along the way. They feel more like Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon thrown into Pleasantville than Joan Allen or Jeff Daniels who had something awakened in them.
Given that this is a film from Sam Mendes, who already made American Beauty, which made the same points with way better side-tangents, I don’t see the point of this movie other than it’s nice to see Leo and Kate paired up again. Even that was them saying “Remember how much you liked seeing Leo as a free spirited romantic, opening of Kate to the world? We’re going to do the exact opposite now.”
Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment