Not quite up to the hype

Rating: 9/10 (8 December 2013)

I saw this at the cinema back on first release. I remember there being a lot of hype back then, a lot of Oscar buzz, a lot of people saying it was the best film ever made. In many ways I believed them. 14 years later and I finally got a chance to rewatch the film. A lot of years and a lot of movies have passed by since then, and it's fair to say that American BEAUTY doesn't quite live up to all that initial hype. It's starting to date very slightly these days. It's still very good, but it's not quite the masterpiece I remembered.
What it is is an effective and extremely black comedy that attempts to skewer the typical, suburban American family. Of course, that conceit is highly familiar - DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES got eight or so years out of quiet and not-so-quite desperation - but American BEAUTY handles it with aplomb. It helps that the excellent Kevin Spacey takes the lead role, and nobody else could have quite grasped the intricacies of his character like he does. Plus he makes his deadbeat lead sympathetic despite his myriad flaws.
The movie works due to its quirky characters, all of whom are difficult to pigeonhole. The twists come a-plenty, particularly towards the climax, and all of them are decent, as are many of the players. I do find it something of a shame that Wes Bentley, Thora Birch, Mena Suvari and Chris Cooper never went on to make much of themselves given that they were all on very strong form here, although the less said about Annette Bening's histrionic turn, the better.