4/5 This Ain't Ozzie And Harriet
  by Alfred Johnson (boston, ma)
Over the past period I have seemingly endlessly retailed the experiences of my young adulthood during the 1960s, the time of the "generation of `68". That makes me, obviously, a child of the 1950s, the time period of this very interesting movie, "Revolutionary Road" based on a book by the darkly sardonic writer, Richard Yates. I have also seemingly endlessly pointed out my experiences and the effects they had as a result of growing up among the marginally working poor in that `golden age'. I am fond of saying that I didn't know there was any other condition than being poor for a long time. Well, I did find out there was and although in my youth I would still have had a hard time relating to the story line of this film. The `trials and tribulations', then, of an upwardly mobile, prosperous young couple, the Wheelers, Frank and April, with the mandatory two charming children and a nice leafy suburban house in some nice town in Connecticut would have gone over my head. Now though I can a little more readily appreciate the seamy psychologically paralyzing side of that existence.

As graphically portrayed in the film that seamy side (that also provided some of the most powerful scenes in the movie, and best acting moments by both Winslett and DiCaprio), the central driving force of the story), is the emptiness of middle class existence in the 1950s. Cookie-cutter is the word that came to mind as Frank and April try to break the golden bonds that keep them tied to their old life. One of the nice moments cinematically is the sequence involving Frank's routine workday morning ritual catching the train to New York City (along with all the other felt-hatted men, the symbol of success in that period). Another sober moment is when April takes out the rubbish in their deathless suburban tract and realizes that this life is not for her.

But how to break those golden chains? The issues presented here about consumerism, meaningless and vacuous work, the isolated role of women in the nuclear family, the eternal struggle for security in an individualistically-driven society are all issues that got a fuller workout and wider airing in the 1960s (and since). In a sense the `whimsical' Wheelers were too early. They were before their time. However, although times have changed, I will bet serious money that if you go to some Connecticut train station headed to New York City on any Monday morning you will see, two generations removed and without the hats, men and women making that same meaningless trip that old Frank made. Yates was definitely onto something about the nature of modern capitalist social organization. But I will confess something, although I know better now the stresses of that fate, I would not have minded, minded at all, growing up in that little `cottage' the Wheelers called home. That, however, is a story for another day.

4/5 Well-Acted
  by catsandbooks (NM)
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio play Frank and April, a young couple with two children living a comfortable lifestyle. Frank has a good job in the city and April, who failed at being an actress, is a housewife. April is very unhappy; she looks at her husband and herself as "special people" who were not meant to live ordinary lives so convinces her husband to move to Paris, where she intends to work and where she hopes he will find the person he's meant to become. The two seem to communicate at different levels and April verges on severe depression. Frank is offered an opportunity to move up in his company and begins to have second thoughts about moving to Paris. He has an affair with a coworker and April has a one-nighter with a neighbor. The movie moves forward via the characters' interactions with one another and constant misunderstandings. Winslet and DiCaprio, together for the first time since "Titanic", have a chemistry on-screen that works for them. They play off one another well and their confrontations are realistic.

5/5 Easily one of the best films of 2008
  by One-Line Film Reviews (Easton, MD)
The Bottom Line:

It didn't get the Best Picture nomination it deserved and Kate Winslet got a trophy for her inferior performance in The Reader, but Sam Mendes's brilliant adaptation of Revolutionary Road deserves to be recognized for the way it breathes new life into the cliched subject of American suburbia: with its perfect cast, beautifully stark cinematography, vitriolic screenplay and agonizing conclusion, this is a searing and nearly great film.

3.5/4

4/5 Not as good as the book.
  by Salvatore Rossellini
This movie is good, but the book is much better.

I liked Kate Winslet's performance very much; Leonardo diCaprio I still can't take seriously as an actor.

Actors like Leonardo diCaprio, Tom Cruise and a host of others have faces that hardly look like they've experienced much in life.

Contrast their faces with the faces of not just actors in the 1930s and 1940s but also directors.

-- Peter Lorre versus Tom Cruise.

-- Erich Von Stroheim versus Steven Spielberg.

-- John Garfield versus Leonardo diCaprio.

-- Mike Nichols versus John Ford.

This is what's missing from the movie version of "Revolutionary Road." I just can't take Leonardo's LA-lovin' baby-face seriously.

Also, the structure of the movie doesn't do justice to what Richard Yates was trying to get across in the book. Yates was saying something fundamental about "the American way of life" -- whereas the people who made the movie (and you can hear this in the DVD extras) were more concerned with the "relationship" between the husband and the wife.

A movie can't ask "Big Questions" about a culture by sarting with the personal; it has to start more generally with the socio-economic realities of time. The questions Yates raised in his 1961 book are shied away from by modern-day, post-9/11 filmmakers. Thus the irony -- a movie based on a book about cultural conformity afraid to step outside the boundaries of present-day cinematic conformity.

Interestingly enough, Leonardo diCaprio in the DVD featurette talk about how the movie is about how one often is guided by what their parents want them to do, versus what they themselves would like to be. True enough, but Yates in his book is saying much more than that. His focus is not simply on specific individual relationships but rather the social, political and economic forces that, ironically, most Americans have been brainwashed into believing don't affect specific individual relationships.

These forces are what history and sociology and economics and politics are all about. But modern-day Hollywood is, for the most part, scared to death to suggest to an audience that an individual is often NOT in control of their destiny; that the world is more clearly understood not in individual terms but rather in terms of collective social, economic, political and historical forces.

The movie shows these forces but only to a certain extentl for example, the outflux of white-collar workers from the suburbs into the anomic vastness of Grand Central Station. But only as a backdrop to Leonardo diCaprio's *personal* heartache.

This focus on the individual as opposed to a focus on the societal forces at work is heard again and again in the voiceover commentary of the screenwriter and the director. They love the story but only as "a story." There's no attempt to present to the audience a "system of reasoning," a way of thinking about America in the 1950s and, by implication, America today.



1/5 Biggest Gagger of all times, can you say give the girl happy pills
  by E. C. Rowe (Illinois, USA)
This movie is about the stupidest flick we ever saw. My mother in law, my wife and I all watched this gagger and honestly could not figure out why we did not turn it off after 10 minutes.

Life sucks, then you get married, have kids and it turns to hell, we get it! We don't need two hours of fighting and unhappiness to prove what we already know. Life is challenging and you have to enjoy the good things when you can. In this movie there is no good things to enjoy, only misery and fighting.

The movie features a nutjob who understand the wives desire to move to Paris France and chuck, all reality and responsibility. The wife in this flick seriously needs prozac or some other mood altering drug. She is unstable and in need of psychiatric help at best. She want to get a secretaries job for a government firm in Paris which makes good money supposedly and allow her husband to be a stay at home bum so he can discover what he wants to do with his life. Mind you, she does not have a job offer, she just knows of these jobs and wants to chuck everything to go there and try to get one. There is no planning or realistic pursuit of this aspiration. Can you say serious loss of reality? When she does not get her way and get to chuck life and move to Paris, she gives herself a home abortion because she is pregnant with a kid neither her or her husband wants and commits suicide. Both the husband and wife have affairs, his is a long time deal with a girl at work, hers is a one time thing(we think, not really sure, they make it seem like this may be something that has happened before?), with next door neighbors husband who says he loves her.

This whole movie is confusing pointless and another Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet flop as far as I am concerned. I hated Titanic! I do not like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and have never seen a movie by either of them that I have enjoyed. My wife on the other hand liked Titanic, but agrees with me that this movie was a serious waste of time!

I would recommend you stay as far away from this rotten movie as possible, obviously there are a few people that liked this movie, how or why I just cannot understand?