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American Beauty (The Awards Edition) Customer Reviews (58 - 60 of 109 Reviews)

AMAZING acting and direction! The best in years!
Kevin Spacey, Annette Benning, and an all-star cast star in the darkly comic and genuinely funny film about a suburban family who has a thirst for difference.

Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, an unhappy-chappy who decides to quit his job, blackmail his boss, smoke marijuana, and pursue his daughter's friend, Mena Suvari.

Annette Benning is his real estate agent wife who is so frustrated with her job and Lester's outlandish behavior that she begins an extra-marital affair with her hardest competition, Peter Gallagher.

Their daughter, palyed by Thora Birch is a desperate teenager who hates her irrational parents, and begins a romance with her next door neighbour, Wes Bently that could change her life.

Those are the Burnhams, and surrounding them is an insane world that they all despise.

AMERICAN BEAUTY is a beauty of a film, that will leave you astonished at it's power, and black comedy mixed in with sad drama.

Even though the film is mostly a comedy, smart viewers (who happen to be the only people I would reccomend this movie to) will g\find that during all the comedy, there is a deep feeling of despair (and great acting and directing)

American Beauty has few flaws, but is not for people who have prejiduces against homo-sexuality, not-too-bright-folks, and anyone who doesn't like this movie, has something else about them that causes their dis-like for this wonderful motion picture.

Entertaining, But Overrated
Perhaps I'm judging this movie a little unfairly--that is, against the hype and excessive accolades it received rather than against only its own successes and failures. It IS, after all, an entertaining, enjoyable film. But I would not call it a great film. Enough has been said about the great performances--yeah, they're great, but....

It is a message film about middle age, suburban American life, and base materialism. As a message film, though, it is very odd. Lester Burnham,

successful executive, burns out, blackmails his boss, quits his job, and develops the hots for his teenage daughter's best friend.

His shrewish wife, meantime, starts a romp with a local hot shot real estate agent, who turns her on not only to adultery, but to shooting, too, offering the cliched explanation that it makes him feel powerful.

Lester's daughter starts hanging out with the weird, pot-dealing son of the fascistic Marine (yes, THAT old cliche) next door. The boy's father beats the tar out of him routinely, and with particular violence when he suspects his boy might be gay. Not soon after, during a painful scene of misunderstanding that results from the boy assuring his father that he and Lester have been having sex (not true; he said it to hurt his father), the father makes a pass at Lester. Yes, ANOTHER cliche: the Nazi-like homophobe (who actually collects Nazi war relics!) who is really gay himself!

And what about the other messages? That the best way to deal with a difficult marriage, and life's disappointments is to quit your job, start smoking dope, and paw your daughter's friends? Seriously?

The only normal, well-adjusted people in this movie are Lester's gay neighbors (the other neighbors), whom we only briefly meet. I wonder...is this a message, too?

One of the most discussed and debated films of our time
And that, if nothing else, makes it an essential film for everyone to watch at least once. Pauline Kael (RIP) hated it and dismissed it as a pandering lightweight. It made over $100 million dollars at the box office and won 5 Academy Awards including Picture, Director & Actor. Some swear by it as the definitive take on the phenomenon known as the American Dysfunctional Family and have seen it 14 times. Others think that films such as Election and You Can Count On Me tackle such topics as infidelity, sexuality, love, hate, death and middle-America inertia better and without the bluster and distressingly sitcom-y tone of American Beauty.

Personally, I could never see my way to hating a film so well acted and directed. The performers, especially the supporting cast, are completely invested in their roles and make strong, bold choices as actors. Sam Mendes, a very gifted & successful
stage director prior to this, keeps the story moving at a nimble pace and manages to establish the world the characters live in vividly so that nothing ever comes across as inconsistent or jarring in terms of Alan Ball's script....which does veer wildly sometimes. It's a shame that Mendes didn't also direct some of Six Feet Under's first season episodes as well. While some refer to the show as "American Beauty Part II: Electric Boogaloo" or "American Beauty Without The Uplift" it does a far better job addressing issues close to Alan Ball's heart and creating more complex characters to represent those views. Unfortunately, their hasn't been a consistent tone with the show yet and the characters behave in ways that suggest that the writers, Ball included, haven't figured out PRECISELY who each character is.

Back to Beauty. One of my problems with the film is its depiction of Benning's character. Essentially, Spacey and Benning's Lester & Carolyn behave very badly towards each other and act irresponsibly throughout. Yet the film sides with Lester's sudden awakening and seems to want to punish Carolyn for having ambition. Lester quits his job, buys pot from a next door neighbor and wants to sleep with underage girls. If you knew this person, you would place him under citizen's arrest or assault him. Carolyn has an affair with a real estate broker and learns how to shoot a gun. I think the film would have been better if it had been less harsh on Benning's character and a lot more on Lester. Benning, being the kind of actress she is, is perfection in the film. In every single scene she plays her characters' intent and motivation with laser beam intensity. The quality of her acting only makes it even more clear how unfairly she is being treated.

Spacey is more problematic. Throughout the film I kept wondering what it would have been like with Peter Gallagher or Chris Cooper in his role and Spacey as either the Colonel or "The King." As Lester, Spacey seems to be doing his Greatest Line Reading Hits. He delivers each syllable with crisp, tart intelligence. But he never seems like a real person. Just a very clever actor riffing on punch line variations. Cooper manages to make a very bad cliche that desperately needs to be retired somehow convincing and very frightening. Yet he too throws the balance off by being a real adult. You believe he has led a life outside of the camera frame. Gallagher steals it as a vain, small time businessman with a bemused smirk plastered on his face.

As the three teens; Thora Birch, Mene Suvari and especially Wes Bentley give performances that could not be improved upon. As Jane, Lester & Carolyn's daughter, Birch is essentially playing the Christina Ricci role except that their really is something sour and unhappy about her Jane. Birch's line readings are always a little bit sleepy and at first it seems like she is doing a poor job until you realize that she is nailing the part dead on. Disaffected teens DON'T deliver Seinfeld-quality timed zingers. There's something always off about her and it was the best choice for Birch to make as an actress. Mene Suvari is the counter to that. Her character is a performance up until the end and Suvari skillfully shows the real character behind the well-executed performance that she is always giving to her friends and to boys. Bentley should have won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. End of story.

An interesting, if deeply flawed, film that time will tell whether it continues to find new admirers and critics or if it will just fade away like Gentleman's Agreement and other well-intentioned Best Picture winners.

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