Hey now, that’s not a nice way to talk about Mena Suvari!
Oh, wait… never mind. 
I don’t think the main character just went to being irresponsible.
I think he just realized that his life wasn’t his own. He realized that he hated his job so he left. He realized that he could have the car he wanted to have and not the car he was supposed to have. He realized that he could smoke a joint and he could work out and be in shape. Getting in shape is not irresponsible. He became responsible for his actions and made himself happy. He made sure he got a severance package at work so his family would be OK.
IIRC there was a dropped plot of the kids, the daughter and the drug dealer, being blamed for the crime because of the video.
Then again Annette Benning had fired a gun that day and had hidden that gun in the bedroom. (but ballistics should clear her)
Mena Suvari is not hot.
I know that doesn’t exactly pertain to the discussion, but I just wanted to say that.
Lester was going thru a major transition thru the whole movie. It was a step by step process.
Old Lester: Miserable with his job, out of shape, lusting over a teenage girl, etc. Important: it is the Old, unhappy Lester that gets a crush on the girl.
New Lester: Doing happy stuff, in shape, having a meaningful conversation with the teenage girl, etc.
The pullback is a natural part of the transition from Old Lester to New Lester. As it also happens, it’s the final part of the transition. So, he’s finally happy.
Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. I sat through a really crappy season of Six Feet Under on the slim hope that we’d see her and Lauren Ambrose get into some girl-girl.
He’s done some OK work in his other two personas, Tobey McGuire and Joaquin Phoenix. I am not convinced that these are three separate people.
[God, a la Family Guy]
It’s just some trash blowing in the wind! Do you have any idea how complex your circulatory system is?!
[/God]
I thought the movie was rather overrated, too.
“The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.” – Philip K. Dick
[anagram mode]
Lester Burnham
Humbert learns
[/am]
I lean more towards Joyce.
Lester Burnham shares initials with Leopold Bloom – they both work in advertising – they are both transfixed by a glimpse of a young girls knickers – they are both in sexless marriages – they are both resigned to their wive’s affairs with tedious braggarts – they both strike up a friendship with young asthete that’s obsessed with the platonic significance of the mundane, in both instances typified by a grocery container – floral imagery is key, and on, and on, and on…
Of course, Alan Ball hadn’t read Ulysses when he wrote American Beauty, and intended no such parallels – just as Umberto Eco hadn’t read Illuminatus! when he wrote Foucault’s Pendulum. “No new thing under the sun,” and all that. 