The movie is about the american dream of living in a big house with a white picket fence, everything matches and the dishes sparkle. It is about the denial of a suburban couple's mid life crisis, their denial of their teenage daughter's depression. The neighbors who move in next door have an "emotionaly disturbed" teenage son; the Marines veteran father being strict to the point of being abusive, a product of his denial. The movie is about our cultural undercurrent of repressed sexual urges that surface in twisted manners. It is about the search for the joy, love and passion that people lose in their youth. It is about the power of denial.
The narrative that occurs at the beginning foretells the culmination of the events that follow. We're not quite sure who the 'hero' is
, it's like watching a slice of suburban life gone wrong. In the sub-plot of Jane and Ricky's relationship, one can see the 'hero-ness' in Ricky who sweeps away Jane, the 'damsel in distress'. On the other hand, Ricky could be a villain in the sense that he somehow created a whole chain of events by re-introducing Lester to smoking pot, eventually causing Lester's death with his dad's anti-homosexual paranoia. Lester and Carolyn were helpless characters, having no control of what went on, like that bag in the whirlwind that Ricky videotaped. The beauty of Life that nobody notices.
The movie tells about the need to remember what is important: joy and the need to follow your heart, to not deny homosexual desires that occurs to many healthy humans and not get trapped by the m
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