Bad sitcom wins multiple Oscars!

Rating: 3/10 (15 July 2002)

It is marginally understandable that so many people are convinced that American Beauty is a masterpiece. As an audience pleaser it succeeds brilliantly in doing what so many award winning films have done before it: it places the viewer up on a high pedestal from which he/she can judge the characters and events taking place from a morally superior vantage point. American audiences are easily seduced by films that are quick to wink at us and pat us on the back with each turn of the plot. The truth about this film is, if you can ignore the incredible ego massage the film is attempting to give you, you'd realize how dishonest its intentions are: how the characters and situations are unrealistic, excessive, and overblown to the point of absurdity; how its gaudy stylistic flourishes are empty and pointless; how its painfully juvenile dialogue is hardly worthy of a UPN sitcom; how its supposed message is convoluted and self-contradictory, to the point that it is even recognizable. This film is symptomatic of a curiously modern American delusion. A vast majority of Americans believe that most American families are dangerously dysfunctional and that American family values are eroding in our culture. At the same time, a vast majority of Americans believe that their own families are reasonably functional and that their family values are fine. I suppose American Beauty can at least be given credit for successfully tapping into this confoundingly schizophrenic impulse in our culture. I can give it credit for little else.