Cool Reaction

Rating: 5/10 (29 March 2000)

"American Beauty" frankly left me cool, unmoved, and repelled by its essence. There seemed something sickly about its basic conceit, something off balance and disturbed. While the quality of the acting and production was at a high level, the core of this work seemed unhealthy, exploitative, and overbaked. While there is room for exposing the homogonized and more sober aspects of suburbia, "American Beauty," in a quest to make itself more competitive with other versions of the truth, tended to exaggerate its own emphasis. The result is a film which can be more appreciated for what it tries to accomplish than what it actually does.