I Rule!

Rating: 8/10 (17 October 2014)

Lester Burnham (Spacey) is 42 years old living in archetypal suburban America. He has a typical office job that he hates, an obsessive, controlling wife (Annette Bening) and a robotic teenage daughter (Thora Birch) who sees absolutely nothing positive in him as a father.
Then Lester meets daughter Jane's friend Angela (Mena Suvari) at a cheerleading event and is smitten, resulting in all those rose petal-themed fantasies that have become incredibly iconic. Then, Lester chooses to escape his slave-like life. He quits his job, trades his car for his dream automobile (a Pontiac Firebird) and starts working out to impress the blonde-haired girl he is becoming weirdly attracted to (not that Angela minds that much). Of course, things get quite tricky for others around him and this builds to a slow, but powerful and tragic ending.
The film does not just follow the Lester-Angela relationship. Burnham gets on well with adolescent Ricky Fits (Wes Bentley), an eccentric, troubled new neighbour, who in turn gets into a relationship with Jane. First she dislikes him, but gets closer and soon she shows interest in his bizarre hobby, Ricky filming just about anything with his camcorder that catches his attention. The plastic bag floating in the wind was apparently the inspiration for scriptwriter Alan Ball. Meanwhile Mrs. Burnham, lacking excitement in her life as well, starts an affair with a rival house seller. And Ricky's father, Col. Fits (Chris Cooper) is a violent man, who goes too far upon believing that his son is gay. In a nutshell, there are a lot of dynamic, unusual characters.
For Cambridge-educated, British director Sam Mendes, this was his first feature length movie. His work, using cool camera techniques including the extensive use of camcorders won him an Oscar and Mendes would go on to direct movies such as Skyfall.
His film defiantly states that being free from the boundaries of life is important and as shown on Fits' camera, there is so much beauty to see if you look closer, as is the film's tagline. It doesn't just exist in Jane and Angela, who are both rather spectacular to look at. American Beauty deserved the Oscar for Best Film as did Kevin Spacey for Best Leading Actor. Along with the other two groundbreaking movies of '99, the Matrix and Fight Club (now I have seen all three!), it gives a quality message to us people: break free.