A non-fiction antidote to filmdom's frequent depiction of unconventional sexual practices as an unhealthy pathology that usually leads to misery and death, The Lifestyle takes a bemused but surprisingly sober look at a cross-section of American swingers. Far from the society-flouting libertarians of popular imagination, the swingers in The Lifestyle take an almost perverse pride in being conservative conformists—outside of their love of group sex—with swingers trumpeting their aversion to drugs, unsafe practices, and male bisexuality. While The Lifestyle subverts stereotypes about swinging, it also reinforces the widely held perception that swingers are, by and large, the last people anybody would ever want to imagine as sexual creatures, let alone wish to see naked. The film's glimpses of sexual activity are more likely to horrify than titillate, as they generally involve a stomach-churning mass of atrophying flesh, jiggling potbellies, and writhing piles of ancient flab. Director David Schisgall fully exploits the humor inherent in the conflict between the swingers' blandly suburban behavior and appearance and the kinky nature of their sexual proclivities, depicting the film's community as a sort of surreal parody of suburban conformity. One particularly unsettling scene depicts a folksy, flannel-clad 72-year-old widow rhapsodizing about daisy chains and foursomes before chastising "black bastards" for giving the phrase "gangbanging" such a negative connotation. Schisgall generally depicts swinging in a fairly positive light, but he doesn't refrain from examining its downside, as well, most explicitly through the experiences of a relatively young, comparatively attractive couple whose short-lived embrace of swinging shakes their relationship to its core. Buying into neither the utopian enthusiasm of its subjects nor the judgmental Puritanism of American culture, The Lifestyle offers a frank, funny, and refreshingly objective look into an oft-misunderstood subculture.