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American Beauty (The Awards Edition) Customer Reviews (85 - 87 of 109 Reviews)

Love it
I've yet to meet a middle-aged woman who liked this movie. That's a shame because this movie has more to say about the state of marital relationships in America than any movie I've seen in years Watch it. It's hypnotic and exaggerated but true.

This is one to love or to hate
I am 16 years old and I loved this movie (although my parentshated it). It is one that you will either love or hate.

AB is anextremly deep and dark film that tells the story of Lester Burnham who falls in love with his daughters friend, Angela. Throughout the movie, you see roses (American Beauty) in association with Angela (cheerleading, on ceiling, in bath). At the start of the story, Lester's wife Carolyn is trimming these roses in her garden. The connection here is that Angela represents what he does not have with his wife (sex). At the moment when Lester would have had sex with Carolyn and putting an end to all of his lustful desires, Carolyn stops the passion for fear that beer will spill on the couch (message here: we often put our emotions on hold due to material items).

In the meantime, Lester's daughter, Jane, begins to date their neighbor Ricky who is obsessed with filming everything.

Overall, American Beauty is an excellent film with many more messages contained in it. (With the central message showing how even with so many problems in the world and so much hatred, there is still beauty.)

I definately recommend this film. Just remember to go in with an open mind.

Intelligent, light, dark, sexy and funny.
The image that got a lot of people interested in this film was that of Mena Suvari lying back in a bed of roses. What endeared it to sensitive souls was its' masterly use of score and mood. Sour-faced critics and others loved its' likeness to 60s satire- its pithy put-downs & side-swipes at the suburban 'American' dream. All these things are known about American Beauty- 'The Graduate' is its' closest forefather. But I would like to look closer. Spacey and Benings' performances have been praised enough- but this is an ensemble film. Thora Birch, Mena Suvari and Wes Bentley are all excellent. What? the critics might say. Sure, they're ok at highlighting the vacuous of American youth but they're not that interesting- that's what they're thinking. This utterly fails to understand what American Beauty is about. By that criteria, the adults are just as vacuous- concerned with a sofa, their body, the car, the house, the image. It is more complicated than that. Chris Cooper's character's repression manifests itself in heavy-handed discipline. We see his wife, kind but blank, as blank as Lester Burnham is beginning to feel, just as Bening cries in quiet desperation. Ricky Fitz tries to find meaning in art and nature and, in him, Janie has found somebody who mirrors her own dark nature but who, to her, seems to have an overwhelming confidence in his own abilities- confidence she lacks for she is a suburban rebel, discontented at herself and her parents more than the world at large- she is part of the Nirvana generation. Like the others, she craves personal happiness. What we see in the film is how adults can become radical while their children are conservative and vice versa- tension rides throughout the film punctuated by violence, sex and dark humour. But those who purely see it as a damning indictment on sleepy suburban mall-going America are forgetting that, throughout, it shows you that there is beauty, emotion, and dreaming in the apparently mundane , like an Edward Hopper or Rene Magritte painting. It's intelligent, light, dark, sexy and funny.

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