Gee, my eleven-year-old son and I just got back from WoW and we both enjoyed it. I didn't really sense any deep symbolism, but I guess I'm just the obtuse type. I don't have the mind to see things like that in other than a simplistic way. It's hard to imagine wasting that much verbiage on a silly movie.
I'm also amazed that the reviewer, whoever he is, thought that Tim's house was a mansion, or that the ex-wife's parents lived in a "fancy" Boston townhouse.
No, you weren't. These articles trying to read all these sinister political themes into the movie are a hoot and say more about the authors than the movie. There really aren't any unless you count one comment from a lunatic about occupations failing in the long run, which is actually pretty accurate from a historical standpoint.
Obtuse is right -- judging NYC metro and Boston housing by the standards of other markets. The writer said "Mc"mansion (as in hold the fourth bathroom and sixth bedroom) in some town north of the GWB (West of the Hudson) in NJ or NY (a typical Soccer Mom ghetto type construction up here in the Northeast). They go for $1-2MM these days in that part of the NYC commuter suburbs. That townhouse was one they owned all of, and not some condo in (they are shown opening up the door to the entire building like they owned it all). A comparable goes for $12.5MM. http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005/06/14/on_the_boston_market_beacon_hill_townhouse.php.
That dump "Ray" lived in was likely a rental at $1000-1200 a month or goes for $250K in Newark (and living in a Hispanic ghetto judging by all the Spanish language signs).
Maybe not "fancy" by mid-Atlantic or Western standards, but the point was clear...