*SPOILERS*

Rating: Null/10 (5 January 2001)

I suspect the reason this film is so awful is due to studio politics and the compromises that have to be made in order to get projects off the ground in an increasingly prohibitively expensive medium. Certainly the director Sam Mendes had to abandon his first attempt, probably because the script is such piffle it's hard to make it work. He gave it his best shot though, fair enough. This isn't the truth about America, it's one script writer's view of his audience and judging by his CV he has not done a great deal other than work in sitcom, which says a lot about the structure, approach and choices made in this film. Trite scenes such as the throwing of the plate (queue canned laughter) and Bening's unconvincing behaviour in selling a house for instance. Nothing works or convinces, especially the fatuous notion that a father should be murdered for 'ignoring' his sibling. I suspect the writer threw in other stuff garnered from 'Sex, Lies And Video Tape' and a tasteless who-dunnit element in an attempt to make the picture seem familiar and entertaining for the audience. The bottom line was always money, not profundity.
I think I'm right in saying Geffin had a hand in backing this film and there has been talk recently of a 'gay clique' in Hollywood and it's influence on the film-making process. I don't know if that's the case here but the gay couple are signalled straight away as being the happiest. The film also plugs the usual gay propaganda that anyone who dislikes gays must automatically be in the closet. The scene where such an alleged person punches his son full in the stomach for touching a plate is particularly unconvincing and pernicious. The portrayal of the wife and women in general all seems to come from a certain questionable perspective.
The so-called spiritual element about the nature of beauty produces an unbelievably laughable scene involving a bag. One character looks at the blood matter of a brain with a hippy dippy stare that seems to say "Wow man, it's so bea-u-ti-ful!" I cannot believe anyone takes these preposterous contrivances with dead birds and the like seriously. It's palpable nonsense.
All this huffing and puffing just for a reactionary 'Wizard Of Oz' homily about a family picture and 'there's no place like home.' The film then fobs you off with some sentimental voice-over guff about leaves and the loss of youth. As the camera pulls back over suburbia and the patronising final sentiments are spoken, I get the impression that someone's behind the screen giggling "My God, are they really BUYING all of this?" Only the sheep.
The reality is that America has oppressed a large number of weaker and poorer countries over the last three decades in the guise of fighting Communism. Very few people seem to be aware of the real horror that has gone on in central America and America's hand in it and the third world in general, and at the expense and loss of life of some of the poorest in those societies. America is not the evil of the world but in the light of this enormous suffering and loss of an experience that only comes once to us all, are we really expected to care about the facile 'sufferings' of Burnham and his wife and their arguments about damaging the sofa? Americans love this film because very few of them have suffered real injustice in their lives, the kind you suffer if you're born in Sudan, for instance. A price has been paid for such comforts and Americans should be grateful for the lives they have, and not whinge. Materialism does not necessarily mean the loss of inner worth or the ability to deepen one's world. Many have been freed to pursue personal expression, such as making drivel like this film. We should all be grateful for what we have in the time we have left, which in the face of increasing super-technology weapon attainment, may not be long.
American Beauty's sincerity is disingenuous. It's purpose is to make Americans feel safe and good about themselves so that the people behind it will be successful and make money. There is a machine that has to be fed and a huge amount of talent-less people are out there figuring out increasingly desperate ways to do just that. 'American Beauty' incapsulates all that is glib, meretricious and plain wrong about modern cinema and as such is, in my opinion, one of the very worst films ever made.