American beauty: my thoughts

During this one mystical two or three month period, every member of the family had enormous life-changing encounters / experiences that seemed to click together with other elements of the film a bit too perfectly. The fact that Benning was having an affair and, business-wise, was jumping into bed with the opposition at the same time that her husband (Spacey) was going through a period of liberation from a supposed prison of disenchantment seemed a little too convenient, wouldn't you say? Around this time, their daughter was going through her first serious relationship which coincided neatly with the disintegration of her parent's marriage. The whole setup of the story was as ludicrously contrived as the sidewalks and nature strips on their street.