I consistently try to point out that Leo is over-rated and for a lot of people this is an upsetting viewpoint to have. This movie, however, pretty much encapsulates what I am talking about when the Titanic stars reunited for a film that still made money despite being pretty awful.
The story behind this is basically just middle class Americana. If you don't know what that means it is just a normal family in the USA who have jobs and make kids and deal with the normal problems associated with doing "regular" things.
The story starts out with Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) meeting April (Winslet) at a party and lovey-dovey stuff happens and they get married and move into a place on (guess what the name of of it is!) Road. They proceed to have normal relationships with the neighbors and friends until the newness of their matrimonial bliss sort of wears off and well, then they start to have problems because neither one of them enjoys the routine of their suburban married life.
Frank has become bored with his day-to-day life and April, who always wanted to be an actress, is starting to find that she can not do that in the regular and quite boring city that they live in in Connecticut. They start to have increasing amounts of problems with one another and the relationship slowly gets worse and worse. This is actually a very real problem that exists in life and I think it belongs in film.
The major problem I have with this movie is not the story as it is based on a rather successful book (of the same name) that I think quite possibly is the perfect personification of how early relationships that are based on lust and impractical ideals can go wrong - that much i think is done very well. The problem I have is that Leo is a babyface and is not believable as an adult or a father. He does just fine as a doe-eyed pretty fella, but as far as being a strong and caring adult who can at some times be intimidating in order to protect his family he just falls flat. He just isn't the right person for the job.
Take the above picture for example. This is meant to be a loving couple that is having a dispute in the kitchen but it appears in the still, and it did in the actual film also, to be an argument between a mother and her teenage son. Leo is simply not the correct person for the job in this movie.
Basically I feel as though this movie should have been made, because it is a good story and an important film. I just don't think that Leo was the correct person to choose for it. I stand by my consistent opinion that he (for reasons I can't entirely explain) is not a believable father or typical adult and this is why his best roles are the ones where he is an atypical human of some sort, such as in Blood Diamond. Revolutionary Road is a dud almost exclusively because of Leo's presence in it.
Had Matt Damon been in this movie - there might have been Emmy's involved
