It Is an American Beauty

Rating: Null/10 (22 September 1999)

I just saw "American Beauty" for the second time, and although I was more aware of the picture's mechanics, it moved as much as it did two weeks ago at the Toronto Film Festival.
Backlashers will gripe that the film goes mushy, that Sam Mendes and Alan Ball are not Todd Solondz, that they are smoothies with too many tricks up their sleeves, blah and blah-blah.
But the fact is that "American Beauty" is a richly textured, emotionally generous, continually surprising movie with moments of poetic subtlety. And could the public's strong response be a sign that it is finally smarting up?