Maybe *I'M* the problem, but...

Rating: 2/10 (1 October 1999)

I'd rather pound nails through my fingers than have to sit through AMERICAN BEAUTY again. I don't say that lightly. Nails. Through. My. Fingers. Perhaps I've seen too many movies or read too many books about the inanities of suburban life, or perhaps I'm simply not EDGY enough to appreciate it. Whichever, the fact remains that AMERICAN BEAUTY, in my estimation, is a loathsome movie, smug and self-important, filled with characters who hate each other and themselves, and who in turn inspired me to hate them. It's a film entirely without compassion towards its characters (excepting possibly Kevin Spacey, nominally the protagonist of the story), but without the nerve to go all the way and condemn them. The filmmakers seem to want to have it both ways: pointing out the lack of soul and warmth in the human condition, while at the same time exalting the wonder and beauty of life. In the end, they seem to be saying, We the Filmmakers are better than these ridiculous people, and You the Audience Member who is enjoying our film are better than these silly, petty people... but aren't they so very charming? It's a movie made for the intelligentsia of our society, and the would-be intelligentsia--the Vanity Fair crowd, as a previous commentator so aptly put it--and they seem to be getting a kick out of it. Me, I thought it was reprehensible.
Thing is, the movie's not INCOMPETENT. Kevin Spacey puts in a characteristically fine performance, and the rest of the cast is decent. There's some pretty cinematography, and arresting images. But the characters, except for Spacey's, are no more than caricatures, and cliches at that: the frigid careerist wife, the homophobic military man who, it turns out, is actually in the closet himself, the sullen teenage daughter, the oversexed beauty queen who's actually a virgin, the chirpy gay couple, and so forth...
AMERICAN BEAUTY is a movie that's neither as funny or as poignant as it wants to be. Instead, it's a self-congratulatory exercise designed to make the tragically hip feel Deep and Insightful and good about themselves, without the heart or the conviction or the COMPASSION to communicate what it (seems to) want to. Sorry, folks.