this movie is a burning attack on the hollowness of many modern American values, particularly for young people trying to find their way through high school and early adulthood. i doubt Al Qeda (sp?) could make a more blasting propaganda film than this about American values. but the problem with this movie is that it never lets its characters be human, it chooses just to show the darkest, most empty portrait possible. this movie will find an audience with people who are so postmodern as to be no longer capable of real feelings or tenderness. any sensitivity is something merely to mock. it will also find an audience with people who would rather savage than understand other people, pre-judging them to something like Sartre's No Exit or a Neil Labutte (sp?) movie. this is only truth as much as the view of an asshole taking a crap is "truth", but there is a whole lot more to human beings than the cold, narrow characters we see here. Solondz characters are all losers or players, when really we are all a little of both and not so much of either. perhaps the harsher reality is that our lives are actually simpler than this, less evil, less harsh, less sad. perhaps Solondz wants to demonize life when life is more of a purgatory than a hell. but either way, you won't see the kinder, more humane moments of life in this movie, and for that, it is a rather sad, simple, pathetic kind of story. not because of the characters, because of the storyteller.