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American Beauty (The Awards Edition) Customer Reviews (31 - 33 of 109 Reviews)

Zero Beauty.
It must have been ESP which kept me from seeing this movie for so many years as I found it extremely disappointing and incredibly overrated. Although, it is undeniable that Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening are wonderful in their roles, and that the camera work is quite impressive. However, these are the few elements in the film that actually do impress.

The amount of mindless cliches inherent to these characters is appalling. American Beauty never fails to present people through the looking glass of trendy, political correctness. Nowhere is this more true than with the gay couple, Jim and Jim. They are the only normal adults in the movie. By depicting them as a picture of stability, normality, and kindness, it is apparent, amidst the dysfunctionality everywhere else, that the creators are more concerned with trying to make a positive statement about homosexuality than present a meaningful film. If all gay men formed the strong bonds these two possess, then there would never be any stigma to homosexuality in the first place. The fact is that only within the gay male population do you find, when polled, anyone who's ever had 10,000 or more lifetime sexual partners. Of course such a level of promiscuity is not the norm, but the majority do not live in mansions out in the suburbs with tax attorneys. What we see here, unfortunately, is pure spin.

Even worse, and completely inexcusable, is the rendering of the Marine Colonel, Mr. Fitts. Unlike the role model gay couple who, despite being a statistical abnormality, are actually representative of some gay Americans, I'm willing to bet that the Colonel is like no military man on this earth. Certainly, he is nothing like any that I have met in my 35 years. Fitts is an utter fiction produced by the mind of someone who hates this nation and our armed forces.

The Colonel's method of leading his family is to beat him son and force him to take semi-annual drug tests. His wife is even less a real person than he is. She's a refugee from Valley of the Dolls and has been demoralized to the point of appearing a zombie. From the moment we encounter Fitts, his accent and style of speech should alert anyone familiar with Hollywood's methods that he will be an example of intolerance. Whenever one hears rural inflections on the big screen, one must realize that the individual will be endlessly derided by the tofu mandarins who intolerantly judge the rest of us from their perches on the left coast. After all, in the moviemaker's configuration, only sadistic, close-minded, evil men would ever volunteer to defend the United States in the first place.

That they could actually try to pass off this World War I drill master as a Colonel, let alone an actual human being, speaks volumes of how little they know about the armed forces and the disdain they have for the brave individuals who guard us while we sleep. One cannot avoid having the impression that the director and screenwriter had never previously even met a member of the Marine Corps.

The Colonel comes straight (sic) out of the GLSEN handbook for homophobia. He is a caricature, the type of person "whose hate will not save him." We discover, just as the politically correct manuals would predict, that he himself is secretly gay. Well, of course he is, isn't everyone who disagrees with gay activists? His existence is meant to dupe us into thinking that homophobia is not really a hysterical fabrication even though the character they choose to convey this is unquestionably a fabrication. He is a creation stemming from heterophobia and paranoia in regards to masculinity. The Colonel would rather kill his own son than allow him be gay which should alert every viewer that the film is utter propaganda The last thing American Beauty wants to do is say something important about human nature.

Just for the record, homosexuality is not something an officer in the Marine Corps would find very earthshaking. How could he given that the Colonel was immersed in a male only culture for the majority of his professional career? Fitts probably had to first deal with it a month after his enlistment began. I bet he would have gotten over its uniqueness by the end of basic training. We will soon have more opportunities to judge this director's opinions as he has just finished making the film "Jarhead." I have no doubt that in it he will more fully manufacture negative imagery regarding the world's most selfless soldiers.

This horrendous portrait of suburbia never fails to disappoint. A world that is steeped with narcissism, materialism, and constant sex is definitely an accurate snapshot of the mandarins dwelling in Hollywood, but it has no correlation with the great number of Americans who choose to live outside our major metropolises.

Beauty is Full of Poetic Grandeur.
American Beauty

By

Nick Schwab.

(Medium Spoiler Warning!)

With a flourishing directional eye, debut director Sam Mendes has created a film that is a dazzling comment on typical suburbia life. Structured out of slightly sarcastic characterizations, yet bitter truthfulness, Mendes has taken the coming-of-age genre, or rather, the re-coming-of-age genre, and turned it upside down and then inside out, like an alchemist. As he takes a story that is basically about one man who doesn't want to continue growing up, and turns it into a symbolic and metaphor-laced allegory of greatness.

Mendes tells his story with a know-it-all level of commitment to the styles of film and the material. Which is shown in the fact that he tells his story with an abundant amount of style, yet unlike some directors, the style never gets in the way of the story. This shows Mendes is a graceful director, with both really good ideas, and remarkable technical skill.

This technical skill can be seen also through famous Cinematographer Conrad L. Hall's photography, that helps add to the film's sunny-suburbia look, as it slowly begins to become more skewed in both its lighting and the character actions. This is shown when the film first takes off and is rather peaceful in appearance, which is seen in many overhead and wide-angle shots of the sunny, beautiful street below. Then by the ending, the film takes a turn into being darker, while the depicted street is being soaked in rain. It is during this time in the film that the photography and the character's actions resemble a play that will end in tradegy, of which it certainley does.

The central cast plays their role with a knowing candor of their characters. Kevin Spacey gives a superior show as the central character, that is never a caricature of a rebel without a cause, but is rather a realistically portrayed one. One character in the film called Spacey's character, "pathetic," while another character called him, "funny." These statements are exactly what Spacey makes his character, that is pathetic, but not unrealistic and comical, but not always funny. With those character elements, Spacey then gives Lester a sense of unsureness and hostility that gives him a teenager mentality. This mentality might make him a guy that some people would like to hang around with, at least, as long as you're under twenty years old.

Annette Benning is another standout as Carolyn, Lester's wife. She's becomes the house's breadwinner and her character posses a personality that is built on high expectations. Benning makes her appear as a character that is determined yet vulnerable, which can be seen in the film, in the scene in which she falls into the bed of another man, when things aren't going right at the home. Another standout is Thora Birch as the daughter. She plays a virginal-like character, and is the film's voice of reason.

There is more then meets the eye in American Beauty, which can be told by the tagline to the film, which tells the audience to, "look closer." This statement is true, as the audience must look closer to bring the metaphors, symbolism and meanings into the light. Starting with, the film as a social commentary with its meaning planted in the fact that, "all is not right in suburbia." The film which ends with a murder, is perfect reason to look closer into suburbia life and see in it a shade of darkness.

Further in-depth would bring you to see that the film features a bold statement about humans sex drive. To be more precise, it's about Kevin Spacey's character, Lester Bernaham, an older man that's drive has been restated when he catches sight of Angela Hayes, played by Mena Suvari. In turn, it is also about adolescents sex drive, and how Angela's one is young and blossoming.

It is these mature themes that make American Beauty a very smart film. The film never gets to be exploitative, or even that raunchy, showing the film to take a sincere approach to the material. The ending of American Buety is partly tragic, yet is built around happiness. The moral of the story shows the beauty of the film, which is simply just to love living, because some day life always comes to an end.

Grade- A

Seriously.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I love Kevin Spacey. I thought this film would be a great spotlight for him.

I was wrong.

There isn't a whole lot in this movie that's redeeming. The premise is that American suburbia has this look of perfectness and that everybody thinks it's some wonderful place. The thing that makes AB "edgy" and "hip" is the way that the modern American family is revealed to not be perfect. In fact, it's shown as a mess.

Well, first off if you needed to be told life wasn't perfect you've got bigger problems than liking this steaming pile of crap.

Second, if you think that this film is edgy and subversive and thought that's why it was cool, go watch David Cronenberg's Videodrome. If you can follow it, you'll get an education in a hurry about what thought-provoking cinema should be.

I'll cut to the chase. The characters in this film are awful. Not one of them does a d---ed thing to help themselves. I, for one, do not identify with characters who wallow in self pity and never stand up to help themselves. And no, Kevin Spacey's character does not deal with his problems. He runs from them. He retreats into a shell of adolescence instead of being an adult and handling the situation he's in. Frankly, he's the worst of the lot. We've got a stereotypical (that's right, in a film that's so high-brow we've got a hopelessly stereotyped character) homophobic All-American type war veteran. He's played capably, but the character is and should be an affront to people's sensibilities. This is how veterans are portayed in this film? What the heck kind of message is that? No veteran I've ever met acted remotely like this.

We've got a cheating housewife, too. That's great. You're not adult enough to handle problems in your marriage so you have an affair. Wonderful. So far we've got a homophobic, borderline abusive veteran, an irresponsible mother, and we've got the "I'll escape my problems by ignoring them" Kevin Spacey. Great.

So we're basically showing how irresponsible Americans are. This is original? I can look out my window and see the same point made for free, and it's less snobbishly faux-philosophic.

And if you think it's edgy to look at America as a land of irresponsibility and that this wasn't abundantly obvious already, you've got your head in the ground.

Instead of dwelling on how bad things are, we should focus on what can be done to fix them. American Beauty is content to sit and shout "LOOK! LOOK AT HOW AMERICA IS DISINTEGRATING! LOOK!" and makes no effort to rectify the problem. The ending is two kids doing what everybody else in this waste of time seems to be doing - running away. Stand up and do something about your lot, you poor excuses for human beings! But no, they'd rather run away than deal with reality.

And that's what does nothing but infuriate me about this film.

I don't understand how anyone can think this is worthwhile or even vaguely interesting. I want the two hours I spent watching this back.

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