It could have been excellent without the pretentiousness

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2005)

The 40-year old Lester has entered a midlife crisis. His wife Carolyn and his daughter Jane hate him. One day he snaps, quits his job and decides to seduce Jane's teenage girlfriend Angela. Meanwhile, Jane is falling in love with the next door neighbor...
"American Beauty", winner of 5 Oscars and 3 Golden Globes, is a highly praised black satire on the American society ( it's currently no. 32 on the IMDb's top 250 films ) but for some reason I didn't like it. It reminded me too much of TV soap operas like "Dawson's Creek" and "O. C. California". Still, I can appreciate the clever script full of funny dialogs ( Carolyn introduces Lester to Buddy. Lester says to him that they met before. Buddy, not so convinced, nods with: "Yeah, I remember you..." Then Lester replies: "It's all right, I wouldn't remember me either." Then Carolyn says to him: "Don't be so weird, honey!"- "All right, I'll be what ever you want me to be.") and quirky characters ( the scene where Angela teases Jane that she wants to have "10 000 babies" with the outsider Ricky ).
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Actually, every ingredient for a great film is there, but for some reason they don't work as a whole. Mostly that's the fault of the awful music which should have just been scraped, the stiff directing and the irritating end. Also, the story could have been so much more elegant and light, instead of just so heavy and pretentious to death. It's an uneven mix of great and weak parts, and the ending result is only an good film. For some this could be interesting, despite the flaws.
Grade: 6/10