VERY overrated, stereotypical, artsy NONSENSE!

Rating: 1/10 (3 April 2004)

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW!!***
People will most likely respond to my review as someone who 'didn't get' American Beauty. What really is there to 'get'? Critics and moviegoers alike swore by this film, and their praises were supposedly justified by the Academy, as they gave it 5 Oscars, including Best Picture, Actor & Director. Let me say that this film was by no means worthy of the praise and awards it got. Watching this movie today let me FURTHER know how useless and unreliable the Academy is in recognizing REAL films. Just put AB on the long list of films unworthy of the awards & recognition it received.

I just don't see the big deal with AB. Everything I saw just came off as clichéd, worn out 'ideas', including crass overacting and a non-existent 'plot'. What was the point of this movie? Ok, it's a view of white middle class American suburbia; pretty obvious. What else is there to grasp on here? I'm actually surprised that the Academy/media has accepted the movie as much as they did. They're actually PROUD of what was shown here to endorse it as much as they did? Hmph! It goes to show you how pathetic and backwards American culture is. It is laughable at how horrible the execution of this film is. It's not hard to see what the makers were trying to do; they just failed to do it. There's no direction with the film, just a bunch of tired ideas thrown together supposedly to show people just how crazy, pathetic, misguided and plain stupid white America is. Quite frankly it made me laugh at America even more. It'll be interesting how foreign people thought of this movie, whether they were able to even critique it without bursting out in uncontrollable laughter at the thought of an ounce of this being true.
There wouldn't have been much of a movie if the characters kept their damn window blinds shut. It is comical things like this that pull the film deeper and deeper into utter stupidity by its end. Kevin Spacey was good in his role, but it's nothing he hasn't done before. His performance definitely did NOT deserve an Oscar. It's the same ol' dull, 'barely keep ya eyes open, slur your lines' Spacey we've all come to know pretty well; nothing special. Seeing his performance only cements my belief that Denzel Washington should very well have won the Best Actor Oscar for Hurricane, a FAR more meaningful performance. I wouldn't have minded if Russell Crowe won for his EXCELLENT performance in The Insider, his best performance to date and also way better than Spacey's performance. Annette Bening was just pathetic to watch, way too much overacting; just a sad, poor excuse of a 'performance'. No one else is worth mentioning acting wise.

I don't see the beauty in this film. The whole movie was just silly. Many people have already talked about it, but c'mon.. a plastic bag? The makers just went out of their way to paint these suburban, middle-class whites as pathetic, stupid, meaningless and empty they really are. A stalker weed head drug dealer who finds beauty in a plastic bag blowing in the wind and has a fetish for videotaping everything; a Marilyn Manson look-a-like daughter who likes getting naked in front of a window; her wannabe whorish friend who really hasn't 'done it' before and has a stupid, whorish opinion for everything; the most pathetic character of em all - the complete loser of a wife who's unfaithful and 'won't be a victim' when she actually causes, and deserves for that matter, everything that happens to her; and the ill-fated pedophile husband who feels he has to take control of his life by wacking off every morning in the shower and reliving his 'glory days' of the 60s - not limited to smoking weed, listening to Pink Floyd albums, and lifting weights to impress a 16 year old. Can't forget the next door neighbor ex-Marine colonel who seems homophobic at first only to turn out to be gay himself; and the new male gay couple who just moved in trying to play like they're normal and make friends with everyone on the block. I'm telling ya it doesn't get any better than this! A world full of down-on-their-luck white so-called big wigs who don't know how to close their window blinds; and at the drop of a hat jump to complete lunacy and thoughts of suicide once things don't go their way. All while that plastic bag blows in the wind. 'Look closer' they said.. for what? You're not showing me anything I haven't seen before, not to mention you're showing it in the most illogical, far-fetched and utterly stupid fashion. What a load of crap this 'movie' was. There's a serious dogfight going on between AB and Titanic for the number 1 spot on my 'Most Overrated Films of All-Time' list. AB is a terrible film; nothing but a big fraud - the likes I haven't seen since Titanic and Forrest Gump. If this isn't a good case I don't know what would be but..DON'T believe the hype. Number 29 on IMDb's Top 250..hell I won't even bother attempting to measure the credibility of that list anymore..now I've seen it all. But why am I surprised? LOTR ROTK is #4. Calling American Beauty art is like saying feces is odorless...not only is it not, it's pretty rancid as well.
ZERO out of **** stars.