yet another pretentious holywood movie

Rating: 1/10 (4 June 2000)

At first while watching American Beauty it seems like it could be a truly good film. However, despite good cinematography, acting, and OK plot, this film lacks something unforgivable - a good story.
The story is pretending to be inspiring and thought provoking. What we see is Kevin Spacey trying to rebel against the rigid society he lives in. And by trying to be different he's just more of the same. This is where the film fails. In today's society, rebelliousness is confused with true originality, and this film makes the same mistake.
The main character is rebelling against the alienation and out of balance value system that everyone adopted. That's a decent intro to a potentially good story. But that's where it all ends too. We don't see any kind of growth on his part, with the exception of the last few seconds of the film (when he looks at his old family picture - and that's not enough); nor do we see something that would certainly make for a truly great film - a realization that rebelling is NOT the way out of alienated life, but a way to stay in it (while unfortunately thinking that something good was done about it). Drugs, sexy girls/wives, dream cars no matter how extreme and "different", have never brought true happiness to anyone; they are cheap substitutes for something essential. But in American Beauty that rebelliousness is shown as a solution for our hero.
The film may give those who are just as alienated and rebellious something to identify with; others will be disappointed with the story that seems like it will have some depth, but stays within conformistic boundaries of today's society and makes no progress.
All in all there was nothing great about this film, only a disappointment that there was nothing original about any of the characters - they are living their limited little lives thinking that they are different when they are not. This film also pretends to be different when it is not.
Kevin Spacey just being himself doesn't really give a special performance; OTOH, Annette Bening is excellent.
Hardly a 4/10 (only because of Annette Bening and good cinematography).