Other than the fact that both the characters and situations were shallow and false, I was bothered by the way he constantly asked his adult daughter to forgive him. This doesn’t sound bad on the surface, but the movie presented it as, “You need to get over all the years and years of neglect and emotional abuse and just move on now as if nothing happened.” When his daughter’s roommate needed some advice about the emotional turmoil she was experiencing because of her parent’s impending divorcing, Spacey’s character told her basically to get over it immediately.
I think that’s bad advice. That’s not forgiveness or compassion; that’s denial - about what happened, about the emotional tumult that comes with the dissolution of relationships, about what the ripple effect has been and will be in their lives. It's an attempt to craft a world in which people sow what they want - and then reap what they want too! Life without consequences! It's a win/win for the perpetrators of thoughtless and destructive deeds; meanwhile, everyone who has been victimized must bravely endure the fallout as if nothing at all went wrong. The ones who can't get over it that quickly are portrayed as immature, hardened, and just a bit mean.
