This is a great movie- see it!

Rating: 3/10 (10 October 1999)

The tagline for AMERICAN BEAUTY sums up the whole two hours in two words. Look closer.
When we first see the suburb where most of the action takes place, the camera looks to be mounted on a helicopter. It glides along the tree lined streets.
There's one house in particular where most of the action takes place. From the outside all is normal and nice. This could be a neighborhood from OZZIE AND HARRIET or FATHER KNOWS BEST. Look at the family living in the house with the red door. A man who works in advertising. His wife who sells real estate. His beautiful daughter. Look closer.
These people are estranged from each other and, worst of all, from themselves. At the risk of lapsing into jargon, their authentic selves have long since been abandoned. Look closer.
These are three desperately lonely people. On the one hand, the movie is hilarious. There is wild humor here that reminds you of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and THE GRADUATE. But these people are dying inside.
The father becomes infatuated with a girl who's in the high school drill team with his daughter. She's a blonde beauty who's got ambitions of being a model. She seems tough as nails and ready to do anything to get what she wants. Look closer.
The family next door is even more bizarre. The father is a homophobic, self-righteous retired military officer. The mother seems terrified out of her wits and is in a zombie-like state. Their son is involved with drugs. He keeps reality at a distance by videotaping everything. He has a hauntingly beautiful tape of a plastic bag being blown by the wind that I could have watched for hours. When he gets involved with the girl from next door, we're sure that we know what's going to happen next. Look closer.
If the movie has a fault, it's that it's too short. There are about a dozen characters we'd like to see examined in more depth.
Watching this, I marveled at how comparatively normal my own life really is. Teenagers can watch this movie and come away thinking that maybe their parents aren't really all that weird after all :-)
An important point to ponder, though. The characters in this story didn't come to these points in their lives overnight. Everything that's gone wrong went wrong through a slow process over the years.
Every person who sees AMERICAN BEAUTY will come away saying, well, that's not my life. That was interesting but it couldn't happen in my state, my town, my neighborhood, my house. Look closer.