I had mixed feelings about this film

Rating: 5/10 (20 June 2014)

If I'm being totally honest, I was considering stopping watching American Beauty at about the 60 minute mark. I felt that the first half of the film struggled to make any sort of point. It just seemed to wander and meander from one creepy scene to another.
I'll admit that the concept of a much older man suffering a mid life crisis and trying to score with a much younger women (or girl) in this case makes for an interesting social commentary - it is also a believable premise. The problem is that the writers seem to forget at the start of the film what point they are trying to make? I'll admit that some of Spacey's characters scenes where he was trying to get buff to impress Angela were quite funny. One failing of this film is in its lack of subtlety; some moments had me cringing - the slanging match between Carolyn and Lester at the second dinner table scene was particularly bad (in fact I could go as far to say that it was laughably bad). It had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face). The masturbation scene when Lester is thinking about Angela was probably meant to make a rather unsubtle point that there is a major failing in their marriage, but the fact that Lester openly admits to masturbating once a day means that this scene loses the impact that it intended to make.
Far and away, the most interesting character in this film was Ricky Fits (Wes Bentley). He comes across as creepy and weird, but Jane sees something in him. It soon becomes clear that Jane and Ricky are sort of kindred spirits and Ricky is quick to see Angela for what she really is.
I've mentioned that the first half of the film was somewhat slow and ponderous. The second half was much better. The second half of the film has a darker edge to it and it finally seemed like the film was starting to make an attempt at social commentary. The character plot twists admittedly were somewhat predictable, I still liked the way that many of the characters became sort of an 'anti-cliche' in the end.
This is a tough one for me as the film does have a mix of good and bad. If the first half of the film had been as good as the second half then I would have enjoyed it a lot more, but the lack of focus and general cringe inducing first half meant it wasn't an easy ride getting to the much more enjoyable second half. I'm on the fence on this one. There is good and bad in equal measures.