Great Performances, Unimportant Film

Rating: 5/10 (16 May 2000)

With the amount of hype that American Beauty received, chances were I was going to be somewhat let down, but I nevertheless rushed to Blockbuster as soon as it was released and settled in front of the VCR hoping for greatness. Alas, my first instincts had been correct, even more so than anticipated.
It probably goes without saying that Kevin Spacey was superb; he always is. And Wes Bentley was exceptional as his character walked the fine line between his own reality and his father's. But that's where the praise ends for me and the incredulity at having been duped by the Hollywood publicity machine begins.
For those who spout that this 2-hour waste of celluloid has deep meaning, I would ask for just a shallow explanation. The whole thing was a jumble of scenes and ideas going off at tangents. The bag blowing in the wind and the speech that accompanied its viewing were where I almost turned the VCR off, but I foolishly thought to myself, "Well, it won for Best Picture. Surely something's gonna happen to tie this all together." I was sadly mistaken.
And when Spacey's dead character reiterates at the end (while again hammering us with the plastic bag) that there's beauty all around if you only look, I felt the bile rise in my throat. He was killed, I'm not sure why (I especially didn't understand the killer's motivation in view of the scene in the garage just a few minutes prior) but finds beauty in the world -- in everything, for that matter. It was meaningless to me and, I'm sure, to a lot of other poor saps who wanted to believe the hype.
One final note: I was a die-hard Quantum Leap fan -- I have every episode on tape -- but I'm really tired of seeing Scott Bakula still playing Sam Beckett all these years later, here as a gay next-door neighbor of, again, absolutely no consequence to the movie.