I don't get all the fuss...

Rating: 4/10 (4 November 2018)

The fact that this movie won Best Picture just re-affirms in my mind that I can't rely on the Academy to judge movies fairly. Sure, I wasn't around in '99 to see the competition but seeing this movie now (in my twenties in 2018) really doesn't do it for me. It was so boring! You're watching all these people's secret lives and it's so tawdry: a love affair, a company downsizing, and a teenager smoking pot.......?
The climax happens, finally, in the last fifteen minutes, and doesn't make much sense to me. Whoever wrote this screenplay really needed an English professor reading over his shoulder asking what the characters' motivations were. WACK AF.
Barring the really weird Lolita overtones, the movie itself seems like a film school's senior project. Couple the narration from the grave with the overall message ("look closer" at people's seemingly picture-perfect lives), and you have a wholly unimpressive film.
Two of the principle characters, Jane and Ricky, were flatter than a board, and two of the minor characters, Buddy and Ricky's mom, were flatter than them! A waste of Alison Janney, imo. Not to mention Peter Gallagher. Smh so sad.
I didn't get why Jane hates her father so much, except inasmuch as any suburban white teenage girl "hates" her life; and Ricky was effing creepy, always filming people and varying his facial expression between empty and on the verge of crying. Weird, weird, weird.
If you want an existential movie with snappy dialogue, go for The Truman Show, Office Space, or The Game. American Beauty really missed its mark.