The Catcher in the Rye for the Great Recession generation, Rocket Man is a satire of life today, a time when middle class America is holding on by its fingernails to the increasingly elusive American Dream.
Rocket Man is a very funny and poignant comment on our times, when an upside down middle class is barely hanging onto the American dream. Dale Hammer is a man who is determined to find meaning in a landscape of suburban homogeneity, looking for the moment he had with his own father when they blasted off a rocket on a wintery evening. He feels his son slipping away as he tries to get around “the silent shame of fathers and sons.” He becomes the Rocket Man for his sons scout troop. When Rocket Day comes, Dale is determined to give his son more than his father gave him.
