Entertaining. Provoking. Intelligent.

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2010)

When Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) made me laugh by his little self-introduction at the beginning of "American Beauty" I knew: This is a nice film. After having seen the whole movie I realized: It is even great!
What I liked most about this black comedy is its intention: You might think your life is ordinary, boring, not worth living. But you are wrong because there is beauty in it. Every single moment. At the beginning Lester is quite depressed: He has got problems with his family, his job, his whole life. He thinks he must do something crazy to become happy again and at the end he finds out that he is wrong, that his life has been beautiful all the time.
Though you could say that the story sometimes goes a bit over the top when Lester starts smoking pot and falls in love with a young teenage girl (acted out by Mena Suvari) it is one of the movie's best elements.
The other characters and their developments are very well worked-out, too. Carolyn (Annette Bening) thinks that her job as real estate agent is the most important thing in life which is one of the reasons leading to Lester's depressions. She starts an affair and wants to kill Lester at the end but finally realizes that her attitudes towards life are wrong. Jane (Thora Birch) is bored of her life and thinks that it is just ordinary and ugly but finds out about its beauty when meeting Ricky (Wes Bentley) who teaches her a lesson about it. Ricky is also one of the most surprising characters. At the beginning you think that he is just an evil, criminal drug dealer and stalker but then you learn about his true nature: That he is fascinated of life. Here American Beauty teaches us an important lesson: You cannot conclude to the inner qualities of a human just by looking at his outer appearance- another reason why I have been impressed by this movie. Colonel Fits (Chris Cooper) is dominating in his family and tries to hide his homosexuality but finally loses his structure in life.
The camera work of this movie has got a high quality: Sometimes the director is "playing" with the camera settings. He shows us the monotony of Lesters neighbourhood by the bird's perspective for example.
There is still one little thing I have to criticise: Sometimes the dialogues and the actors' performance is too static, especially when Ricky is talking to his mother or when the action takes place at school. This is why I did not give 10 points.
But seen as a whole, American Beauty is an impressing movie which makes you laugh at the beginning and think at the end. It is really worth recommending it.