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American Beauty (The Awards Edition) Customer Reviews (97 - 99 of 109 Reviews)

Overrated
With an opening voiceover stolen directly from Sunset Boulevard, this film is pretty typical of undeserving movies that win The Big Prize. Spacey and Bening are a fairly loathsome couple, only sympathetic intermittently. The truly compelling aspect of the film resides in the family next door: father Chris Cooper, mother Allison Janney, and son Wes Bentley. What goes on in this household is the true stuff of moviemaking. Janney who has achieved much-deserved fame as a result of her role on The West Wing has been around quite a while, turning in flawless performances each time out of the gate. But what she does in American Beauty, with only a few lines of dialogue, is simply awe-inspiring. I came away from this film positively stricken by her performance which is a masterpiece of understated acting. The same is true of Chris Cooper (who is, at last, getting much-deserved recognition for his fine talent) in the role of a man trying to contain massive fears about his true identity. And Wes Bentley is terrific, dark and defiant, as the son of this household.

If you take a step back and look closely at the Spacey character, what you see is perilously close to pedophelia--a man lusting after an underage girl. That it's covered in rose petals doesn't make it any more palatable. Yes there are some good scenes but it doesn't alter the core thesis that a middle-aged man, fed up with his awful family, makes drastic changes to his life because he is hopelessly drawn to a teenage girl.

Watch this one for the Janney, Cooper, Bentley performances. They're worth the time. The rest of this prize-winner is derivative--an apple with a worm at its core.

enjoyed it, but,........
This movie is one that I like despite its flaws. It has some great parts to it, and some terrible parts that are easy to ignore the first time, but in future viewings tend to grate.

the good

Most of the acting is excellent. I like Keven Spacey as the downtrodden father and "former center" of the family. A man that was obviously the bread earner at one point in time until his wife started to outshine him and the family lost respect for him in a whole(hypothesis). Annette Benning is good as the woman is is emulating strength in order to gain it, who felt she was weak and was terrified by it. So becomes the cold career woman who is terrified and emotionally weak when no one is around. Mena Suvari was nice as the shallow best friend, who doesn't want to be ordinary. As well as Chris Cooper playing the unlikable Col. Frank Fitts, someone with serious issues.

The basis for the story was intersting. Characters who pretty much design their lives to hide behind their fears. The mother fearing weakness, the father fearing he was wasting his life, the daughter and her friend fearing being ordinary, and the former marine being in the closet about his homosexuality.

Some of the visuals were interesting, many of them involving roses and Kevin Spacey's sexual fantasies. But it had a bright, shiny, almost too clean feel. Showing this upper middle class neighborhood as seemingly perfect until you get to know the people involved.

the bad.

Some of the acting was great, some of it was flat out terrible. Thora Birch is attractive in a natural sort of way, but a terrible actress. I wasn't at all interested in her character, a whiny brat that hated her parents for giving her this opulent lifestyle and wanted breast implants(pick an actress that might need them :). The love interest was supposed to be this special kid that no one understood, which I didn't either. He came off as a creepy slob who sounded like he was on the drugs he was selling most of the time. The scene where he sees god in a bag blowing in the wind was wonderfully parodied in Family Guy. All the scenes with them just seemed to fall flat.

The idea of the marine in the closet was just cheesy, way too 90's. I don't believe that every person who has something against gays is in the closet.

Kevin Spacey's change was enjoyable, but him speaking in soft tones like he was a monk or holy man was too much.

The ending was dissapointing in some of the mechanics. What he saw as he was passing was great, but the dull boyfriend looking into his eyes and the smile he had on his face took away from the other elements that were being portrayed.

This was a good movie, but like all good movies it is flawed. Great the first time through, but doesn't hold up. It is good for all types, as most people will find someting in it they like, though just as likely something they won't.

looked closer, not much to see...
Nearly every year there is one film that has a lot of good qualities, but critics seem to over-praise and over-hype it to the level of a Citizen Kane or a Casablanca. In 1999, that film was American Beauty. It is contains lots of morally charged themes and tangents, but not really that much to say.

The story itself starts out in the narrative-from-beyond-the-grave style like Sunset Boulevard, in which Lester (played masterfully by Kevin Spacey) describes his shallow and hopeless existence. He is stuck in a dead-end job that he hates, his wife is an endlessly perky on the surface (but a vicious gold digger/adulteress beneath) suburban professional mom, his daughter is a sullen loner and he can only find solace from these suburban ills in masturbation.

Lester decides that he is "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" and rebels against his shallow and oppresive suburban existence by: quitting his job and blackmailing his boss into giving him a year's pay, smoking pot, lusting after a girl more than half his age (and working out to impress her), buying a fast car without consulting the wife, and taking a fast food job (because it requires the least amount of responsibility). In other words, he escapes a shallow and oppressive suburban adult existence by reverting to a shallow suburban adolesence.

If the quandry that Lester is in doesn't look all that oppresive to people, the writers ratchet up the oppresive quotient by introducing the Marine Corps neighbor: Colonel Fitts. Fitts is a caricature straight from Hollywood's neurotic suburbia playbook. (...) Col. Fitts, along with Lester's wife, are the least satisfying and most stereotypical in the picture.

Out of the entire cast Jane (Thora Birch) seems to be the only one who recognizes the symptoms and the correct cure. She knows that she desperately needs structure in her life and won't find it from her father or her mother (and most likely not her "beauty" obssessed boyfriend).

Among the muck described above, there are a few bright spots in the film. Kevin Spacey is frankly riveting as Lester. Even though the character is essentially a riff on the character he played in The Ref, he still acts with such verve as to truly deserve the academy award that he won for this role. In fact, I think its primarily because of Spacey's greatness in this role that so many people have given the entire film such effusive praise. The cinematography and the score are both excellent as well.

In conclusion, while I found some of the film to be excellent and beyond compare of most cinematic releases; taken as a whole, I found it to be less-than-satisfying.

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