Cute little movie about the occupants of a gated community and the secrets and suppressed desires they conceal from the world outside. When a dead sparrow is found on the road in their perfectly sterile community it is enough to send a wave of shock and horror throughout the neighborhood, mounting in a confusion of supposed life-threatening viruses that are merely a symbol of their own hypocrisies. From the pill-popping mother of the anorexic teenage daughter, to the sexually frustrated father lusting after the next door neighbor lesbian couple, to the financially strapped neighbors doing everything to project an aura of affluence, the hypocrisy mounts. When more and more free flying birds die once they hit the rarefied air of the gated community and exterminators are called in to gas the entire area, the teenage hero, the only one who recognizes the dangers of suburban conformity, escapes with his girlfriend to the real world.
Low key and charmingly funny, this is a movie that creeps up on you with its flakiness. As an allegory of the dangers of the "little boxes" mentality of conformity it is extremely well done. Not on the same scale as American Beauty, but with the same undertones, this is a nice little movie with a message. Worth spending time on.
