It's right before the first Gulf War. Jasira Maroun is a naive 13 year old struggling with her sexuality. She gets into a compromising position with her mother Gail's boyfriend Barry. Gail (Maria Bello) sends her to live with her father Rifat in Houston. He is a proud, strict, and volatile Arab Christian from Lebanon. She is sent to babysit bratty Zack next door. His father Travis Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart) catches them looking at his collection of porno magazines and becomes sexually obsessed. Her father starts dating Thena Panos (Lynn Collins). She is befriended by pregnant neighbor Melina Hines (Toni Collette). She gets a black boy as a boyfriend which her father forbids.
Almost everybody is unlikeable and creepy. This film is aggressively trying to disturb the audience in every possible way. It's obvious what Alan Ball is doing and I'm not comfortable with it. In American Beauty, the girls are 16 but Jasira is 13 in this one. At a certain point, it becomes too creepy to be funny but Alan Ball does it so well. I have to give him a point for that. He has just jam-packed this movie with so many issues that it does not crystallize into something more precise.
Almost everybody is unlikeable and creepy. This film is aggressively trying to disturb the audience in every possible way. It's obvious what Alan Ball is doing and I'm not comfortable with it. In American Beauty, the girls are 16 but Jasira is 13 in this one. At a certain point, it becomes too creepy to be funny but Alan Ball does it so well. I have to give him a point for that. He has just jam-packed this movie with so many issues that it does not crystallize into something more precise.