Beware: SPOILERS. Don't read it if you didn't see this movie, it's dangerous

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2000)

So, is this movie really so good, as so many critics praising it to the skies and so many mesmerised common viewers tend to think? It definitely struck a very ill American nerve with its chosen theme - A Great American Mendacity. The film starts off as a satire on shallowness of everyday life in Anytown, USA: Kevin Spacy's hero Lester Burnham is stuck with a dead-end job, whining money-grabbing wife, alienated daughter. LOOK CLOSER -Where does the story go from here? He meets his daughter girlfriend and gets extremely lusty about her. His re-awaken libido makes him do rather stupid things for a common upper-middle-class American, he starts body-building, trades in his Camry for a vintage hotrod, sends his employers a memo, proclaiming that his only desire in life is to have a regular masturbation, starts smoking pot, gets a Macjob at a burger joint. And, then he finds himself happy. Yes, that's all he ever wanted he's on cloud 9. This is presented like a realization of the American Dream according to the filmmakers of American Beauty. And they seem dead serious about it. This part of the plot is for boomers (one of the biggest stratum of the US movie-going audience). The other one is for another big movie-going stratum - teens. There's a dorky guy, who lives next to our typical American dysfunctional family. He's a home-movie enthusiast and a dope-dealer. He's moving force for the romantic part of the script. He falls in love with Burnham's angst-ridden daughter and they contemplate one of the most popular love-struck teens' plans since maybe Romeo and Juliet - to get away from their parents. This dorky guy has also another important element in the story - super macho tyrannical father, who adds a little spice to the somnolent pace of the movie by repeatedly beating his son for no particular reason. The father, who hides his Nazi aspirations, has his tour de force in the end when he performs 2 most ridiculously weird acts, he reveals his homosexuality to Burnham and then murders him. LOOK CLOSER: the reasoning for the final gruesome plot twist is arguable: perhaps the ex-Marine got ashamed of himself for revealing his true nature and decided to commit a final vendetta and go to prison for such a crime to nature. But more likely - the filmmakers didn't have any more ingenious way to end the picture but for this show-offy finale. The only scene where there are some signs of real life is Burnham's chance meeting with his cheating wife at a burger joint. It seemingly reveals the filmmakers affection for Beavis and Butthead cartoons, where scenes on this location were continuously perfected. In the beginning of the film, Spacy's hero says that he feels "sedated", that can be said about the pace of the movie. It's overly long: big meaningless pauses. The filmmakers were probably aware of this so they couldn't do without the usual attention-grabbing tricks. Like such trusted weapon as nudity (within certain politically correct limits, certainly). There's plenty of it: some justified, some - not very much. LOOK CLOSER - Why Burnham's daughter does perform a striptease in front of her nerdy boyfriend when he's videotaping her from his house? Well. She's got excellent pair of jugs of course, but is it really demanded by the story? Or, the filmmakers want to spice up the lifeless plot. And about the characters. LOOK CLOSER - Do they seem real? They are just caricatures, certain models that display particular typical traits. It's impossible to care less for any of them. Spacy obviously overplays his character, he plays Burnham like typical all-American bored 40-ish man. He plays him eh - boring. So, let's face it, AB is a formulaic lifeless product of marketing-savvy filmmakers. It has the usual pairing of good guys versus bad guys, only this time it's not some sort of Doomsday scenario, but a black comedy with socially acute theme. It's all the more fitting that it ends on another ridiculous note - Lester's voice speaking after he had been dead.
This film has taken America by storm. After similar unprecedented success of such zero-content marketing ploy as the Blair Witch Project anything can happen. P.S. There's no awe-inspiring metaphysical poetry in the plastic bag flying in the wind. PP.SS. In case you want a much more exciting portrait of an American family, go for Happiness instead.