REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

“REVOLUTIONARY ROAD” (Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet)

You know how when you barf into your mouth unexpectedly and you don’t want to swallow it because you know it will burn & leave your throat feeling raw so you hold it in your mouth, becoming even more ill as you feel the chunks of vomit on your tongue while you frantically search for somewhere to spit up? That’s what watching “Revolutionary Road” is like... maybe even worse.
Leo & Kate play Frank & April Wheeler & right from the git go, I hated them. I’ll just roll thru the notes I took while watching this fun loving couple.
At first I noted that April was a total bitch & Frank was an idiot for staying with her.
Then Frank became a complete bastard & I realized that these two deserved each other.
I then wrote that there must be a law that every man in town must wear a hat, as every single male wore one & they were all the same style (Fedoras, I believe, but never being a hat wearer don’t hold me to that) Obviously the law lapsed during lunch time as none of the men wore a hat in the restaurant scene. Then we see the men marching back to their workplace with hats on. I wondered why I would notice something as mundane as headgear & it dawned on me – I hate these people - I don’t want to be around them & I wish they would both just go away.
In an early scene, Kate’s April is acting in a play & at one point a woman seated behind Frank comments on what a terrible actress April is & I found myself nodding in agreement. I know I’m in the minority on Kate Winslet’s ‘style’ of acting, but I just see a bad actress ‘reciting’ her lines, where Hollywood (& Movieluva) see greatness. DiCaprio does a decent job here, along with Kathy Bates (As the realtor that finds them the house on Revolutionary Rd) In fact, most of the cast performs well; Michael Shannon stands out, but he also has the luxury of playing the only intriguing character. Downside – he only has 2 scenes.
In the first 10 minutes we witness an angry, childish, nearly violent argument between Frank & April – then a flashback to their first meeting; but who cares, we already know these two people don’t like each other now, what’s the point in showing us that when they first met they could tolerate one another? I think we already surmised that by the fact that they were Mr. & Mrs. Wheeler. Then, right around the 10 minute mark, we see Frank take a cute secretary out for lunch, get her drunk & have sex with her. The secretary, despite knowing she was ‘used’ by Frank as a birthday present to himself, seems to like him anyway. This leads to the question – why not divorce the bitch & start over with the (very) friendly secretary?
This would have also saved us from having to listen to April spout such ridiculous lines as, “No one knows the truth, they just get better at lying!”
There were a few chuckle-able lines that were meant to be taken seriously in this film, but that’s the only one I wrote down...
What saves this from being possibly the worst movie ever made is Michael Shannon’s John – the only character I could relate to – the fact that John was recently released from a mental institution means two things 1) John at least has an excuse for behaving unruly & obnoxious; & 2) The fact that I could relate to him means I shouldn’t be allowed out in public. John’s two scenes offset the ‘hopeless emptiness’ of the rest of the film; ‘Hopeless emptiness’ being Frank’s words to describe his & April’s life together & we, the lucky audience, get to dwell in this hopeless emptiness for over 2 hours. To further drive the point home, after April tells Frank she hates & loathes him, he calls her ‘an empty hopeless shell of a woman’; thus changing their relationship from hopeless emptiness into empty hopelessness. It’s a subtle change & you really have to be paying close attention to notice the difference.
Over halfway through this disaster movie, Frank pleads, “April we CAN be happy here.”
. . . HUH? This ‘Match made in Hades’ couple haven’t been happy since the day they met & all of a sudden Frank thinks the wicked witch is going to suddenly become cheerful?
The whole plot that supposedly keeps them together is a pipe dream about moving to Paris so April can work in an embassy & Frank can ‘find himself’ as soon as he learns to speak French. Since we never hear him utter a single ‘oui’, it isn’t difficult to figure out that the move to Europe probably won’t happen. Speaking of Hades, if there IS a hell, I’d bet everything I have that Satan already has this film on an endless loop playing in his realm (Sans the 2 scenes with Michael Shannon, of course! ‘Sans’ – it’s a French word, Frank, look it up in that dictionary you keep ignoring)
When Frank & April aren’t being uber-annoying, they’re as boring as watching a senior citizen fall asleep while watching a ‘Golden Girls’ rerun.
I won’t spoil the ending by revealing what happens - just know that my only concern was how difficult it was going to be to clean the carpet...
At one point an elderly man gradually turns his hearing aid down until there is complete silence . . . oh, if only he had done that 2 hours earlier, I’d have been so grateful, I would have offered to change the old coot’s diaper!
To borrow from the title of an old Gene Wilder/Donald Sutherland flick – Start THIS ‘Revolution’ Without Me . . .