Great acting, but sleazy storyline

Rating: Null/10 (12 August 2002)

American Beauty is an Oscar-winning account of a man's mid-life crisis and the hell he puts his family through while experiencing it. I will say that this movie is well acted and the cast was good. However the story line was extremely dark and sleazy. Kevin Spacy plays Lester Burnham, a middle aged man with a wife (Annette Benning) and daughter (Thora Birch). Lester starts to realize his life isn't how he would like it to be and starts to raise hell about it. He deserved an Oscar because his portrayel of this easily hateable character, makes you just want to reach into the screen and punch him. Despite the superb acting, *SPOILER AHEAD* all the sexual content, inuendo's, drug content, and language, takes away from the film. There are some comical parts, however, I find alot of the subject matter to be extremely distasteful and inappropriate. I understand that the movie is supposed to be that way, but I find it to be distracting. The almost-sex scene with Spacy and Mena Suvari was unnecessary and so was Thora Birch's nude scene. If you don't mind a very R-rated movie, this is the movie for you. Again, some parts are funny and the acting is great, but I wouldn't reccommend it to those of you who aren't into all that stuff.