This Beauty is definitely skin-deep

Rating: 6/10 (15 March 2000)

Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
This is the sound of the heavy hand I heard emanating from the screen as I watched American Beauty. The characterizations are so broad and cliched as to be almost cartoonish. These characters are -- the whole movie is -- about as deep as the paint on my walls. (Less so, in fact: I used two coats.) Like the city of its origin, it's a gaudy board covering a deep hole, platitude ornately expressed. It's bumper-sticker philosophy.
Is it fun and sometimes very funny to watch Kevin Spacey make war with (the filmmakers' idea of) convention? Sure. It's also painfully adolescent. It gives an out to pent-up angst. But Lester Burnham's carpe-diem catharsis is the worst kind; it's not bravery to act the way he does in his release, it's bravado.
How much of a epiphany can it be when it's not enough to spur him to regret and apologize for his shameful behavior? He's been just as guilty as any of the other guilty parties in the film of being blind to the implications of mortality, yet when his eyes are opened, he doesn't seek to expand on that understanding. He doesn't use it for anything other than an excuse to become self-indulgent. That's not courageous, that's selfish. I'm supposed to admire him for this? I'm supposed to admire a guy for not having sex with a minor? This is how low our standards have dropped? Frightening. Good for Lester for seeing the light, but shame on him for not learning anything truly worthwhile from it. The same admonition applies to the filmmakers.
Basically this is yet another movie that espouses the idea that personal happiness is more important than moral behavior, which is why American Beauty is so popular. People are more concerned with how they feel than how they act. They'd rather be happy than moral. It's easier. Definitely American, but it ain't beautiful.