Revolutionary Road

The Academy may be bafflingly in love with The Reader (literary adapation! Holocaust! accents!) but thankfully it resister the precision-tooled awards-wannabe that is Revolutionary Road. Confronted with two people continually arguing over the course of a couple of hours, the only sensible reaction is to leave them to it. With a lack of context and backstory, April and Frank's dissatisfaction is a self-indulgent irritation rather than an understandable state of mind. A flashback to the couple's first view of their house juxtaposed with April's current reaction to the neighbourhood tells us nothing about *why* she now feels this way. Large house, two perfect kids, liked by seemingly everyone - it takes a huge leap of faith to fill in the gaps and frankly I didn't care enough about the characters to bother. And oh, are you made aware of the fact that this is an "acting showcase"! Raised voices, tears, quivering lips, and the voice of reason froma mentally unbalances man. God, I hated this film.