If you’re looking for a feel good movie this break, just stop looking now. This season’s box office includes some serious downers—dying dogs, a man aging backwards, Nazis, need I say more? It’s as if every movie I’ve ventured to see this month exists with the sole purpose of doubling the society’s suicide rate. Revolutionary Road, even with Oscar worthy performances by Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet, is no different—especially if you ever had the intentions of getting married, moving out to the suburbs and raising a family—you know, the good old American Dream.

I went in there glowing with nostalgia for the glorious reunion of Jack, Rose, and even the Unsinkable Molly Brown (Kathy Bates). Though, by the end of the film, I kind of wished they would have just left Jack frozen at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Adapted from Richard Yate’s 1961 novel, Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a married couple who relocate from New York City to the suburbs of Connecticut in the 1950s. The entire movie depicts the dimensions of their relationship and the death of their dreams, essentially leaving the viewer with a hopeless sense of life. It’s certainly not a movie we are meant to enjoy—more so one that tells it like it is, shattering the glorified illusion that surrounds the 1950s middle class, and perhaps even the institution of family as we know it.

Also the director of American Beauty (1999), Sam Mendes takes that same cynical “ordinary” life vibe and sets it back about 50 years. It is easy to make connections between the two films, and not in a hackneyed kind of way. 

The onscreen chemistry that Dicaprio and Winslet shared back on the Titanic in 1997 hasn’t faltered a bit, only enhancing their individual performances. 

Bottom line: Go see this movie, if only for the Oscar buzz and Leo’s sexy scenes of rage.  Just be prepared to come away with a bit more morbid outlook on life than when you went in.