Revolutionary Road - 8.5/10 FRUs.

While we did not intend our first review to be serious, we saw Revolutionary Road just last evening and as it is a serious movie, we will do our best to be serious.

The movie begins with Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) talking to his future wife April (Kate Winslet) for the first time at a party. Suddenly, time jumps to several years down the road, the mid 1950s. No thanks to Frank's encouragement, April's dream of becoming an actress fades into the overwhelmingly mundane landscape of suburbia. Set in the post-war era that saw the birth of Levittowns as well as modern day suburbia, the movie stages themes of convention, conformity and institutionalism against the desire to be special. Ultimately, Frank and April's struggle is less against the conventional and thus "boring" lifestyle of middle class suburbia, but more in defining their uniqueness. Plagued with the concept that their life is a lie, April convinces Frank to move to Paris and start afresh. It is Frank's "practical" side that sees to the demise of this whimsical plan. At one point, Frank notes, "People never forget the truth, they just become better at lying." Ironically, the only honest character in the movie is John Givings (Michael Shannon), an "insane" Mathematician who has lost his talent due to the shortcomings of science (electric shock therapy hindered his ability to feel and do math). He visits the Wheelers while on break from his institution. His words are as humorous as they are true and certainly applicable to the present day. In all, this movie gets 8.5/10 FRUs.

Also, although neither of us has read the book by Richard Yates, the movie is literary and thus worth watching more than once. The film is extremely well done though quite depressing and at times, disturbing. The movie has a warm up period. Neither one of us was immediately receptive to the characters. The third scene in the movie consists of a heated argument between DiCaprio and Winslet. At the time, their acting seemed exaggerated and unbelievable. We eventually warmed to their characters and in retrospect, the scene is well-played. Like we said, this movie is worth seeing more than once though we advise no more than twice as we want our readers to live happy lives, not ones full of depressing thoughts. Our sandwich recommendation is egg salad without the crust and we best describe the movie as Stepford Wives meets the Twilight Zone with a splash of the Titanic. Or at least that's what Flo says. Peach has only ever seen one episode of the Twilight Zone and although she has seen the Stepford Wives, it was approximately four years ago and it will be another four before she sees it again.

On a completely different note, a series of odd things happened to us tonight while at the movie. Flo nearly ran over two old women on the way into the theatre. She's quite aggressive when it comes to pushing revolving doors. Both of the women had canes and may or may not have resembled the two of us in 50 some years. Once again, the theatre reeked of feet. Almost everyone in the theatre had the flu (why go to the movies when you're extremely ill? sit on your couch at home and watch reruns, seriously, NyQuil inhibits you from experiencing anything remotely rewarding). The kid sitting two seats from Peach fell asleep five minutes into the movie. Over the course of the film, he managed to sprawl over three seats challenging Peach's comfort level. And true to form, Peach managed to propel her phone several rows forward the exact moment the movie ended. If you know us, imagine the two of us crawling around the seats of a nasty NYC theatre searching for Peach's phone by feel. If you don't know us, envision two old Jewish ladies. We both felt things about which we don't care to share. Don't get frisky with the floor of a movie theatre - it will get frisky right back at you! In the end, Peach found her phone and the two girls made it back safely to their apartments (in case you were worried). Oh, and in case you care, every sex scene in Revolutionary Road lasts about 12 seconds and is entirely pants on.