This is a critique of suburban America?

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2000)

(some spoilers, be warned)
After having finally watched American Beauty, I have to wonder if there is anything the Hollywood hype machine can't do. They should have awarded Dreamworks publicists a special Academy award for making everybody believe that this bland and cowardly film is a daring and shocking look into American life and deserves the heaps of praise it has received. (The cast deserves most of that praise, though. I hope this is the last time that so much talent is squandered in such a movie.)
I hate to break it to the suburban Americans out there, but guys, there is not really much to see to your life when you look closer. I've read in some of the comments here that some people think this movie is un-American and immoral, but I think most of these "conservative critics" are Dreamworks employees trying to fuel some kind of controversy. Absolutely nothing shocking or immoral happens in the movie. For example, Lester spends months fantasizing about Angela and generally having a serious midlife crisis centered around her but he is able to control himself and does not sleep with her because she is a virgin? He even cooks her a meal afterwards and talks about his daughter with her, for God's sake! Hallelujah, he was about to be lost but he is now found! If only he hadn't been killed, he would have become normal again. This is a celebration of some cheap morals, not a peek into the dark side of the human psyche. And just because the ridiculously one-dimensional gay-hater is secretly gay, does it mean that the film deals a blow against suburban American values? It's nothing but a stupid joke on the expense of gay-haters, not deep social commentary. And the fact that he shoots Lester is not "shocking", it's just the easy way out. If the guy actually overcame his idiocy and was able to talk to his son, we would have seen some pretty unorthodox resolution to this vaudevillian situation. (I could not believe the scene of the marine dad watching his son and Lester "get down." It was worthy of a lame Seinfeld episode, not the Best Picture of the year)
The only message that I got from this movie is: Don't worry that your lives seem to suck, people, there is more to them than you can see, so keep on living the same way and feel good about yourselves. And, by the way, don't worry if you cannot see anything if you "look closer", we'll tell you what it is that you cannot see.
In short, this is a mediocre celebration of suburbia and people should be ashamed to have fallen for the hype and made this the #2 movie of all time.