American Beauty
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, R, 122 m, 1999
Directed by Sam Mendes. Stars Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, et al. 

Whenever Kevin Spacey talks about Lester Burnham—the unhappy middle class schlub that he plays in American Beauty—he does so with the type of reverence usually set aside for significant tragic characters like Hamlet or Willy Loman. Of course, a mantel full of trophies (including an Oscar) for his performance hasn’t exactly helped to deflate Spacey’s delusion that he had a hand in creating the Great American Movie. But there’s nothing terribly deep about American Beauty; it’s a pseudo-intellectual’s swipe at the bourgeoisie. The decadence and banality that lurks beneath the immaculately kept zoysia in America’s ‘burbs was examined before—and far more artfully—in Blue Velvet, which writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes freely crib from. (I’m surprised they didn’t go for a shot of ravenous insects munching away at the stems of the film’s titular flowers.) Lester’s wife, Carolyn, is a realtor and an anal-retentive, cold-blooded shrew. When she’s not having a conniption over failing to close on a house, she’s tending to her garden and its prize-worthy rose bush. (American beauties have delicate root systems that are prone to rot. Get it?) Carolyn, played by Annette Bening, is virtually interchangeable with the character Mary Tyler Moore played in Ordinary People (which the filmmakers also lift shamelessly from): both women are so consumed with their outer shells that they don’t have to deal with their families coming apart. Carolyn stopped putting out for her husband some time ago, so Lester turns his carnal desires to their high school daughter’s flirtatious cheerleader pal, Angela (Mena Suvari). (Lester’s fantasies about her wallowing in a bed or bathtub full of rose petals seem too fussy and girlish—at least for a supposedly straight male.) The pompom-shaking Lolita reinvigorates Lester: he quits his job, buys a muscle car, and hangs out in the garage all day lifting weights. He also takes up the wacky weed, which he scores regularly from the creepy loner next door, Ricky (Wes Bentley). Ricky likes to videotape the private happenings in his neighbors’ homes (where the window curtains are always conveniently parted), and this so intrigues Lester’s quietly rebellious daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), that she allows him to take her virginity. Ricky’s dad, Frank (Chris Cooper), is a retired Marine colonel, so naturally he’s written as a sadistic bully and a repressed homosexual. (It’s an odious bit: when the colonel, drunk as a skunk and sopping from the rain, makes a pass at Lester, the audience responds with nervous giggles.) The most contented characters in this bonkers black comedy are a couple of openly gay guys that live down the lane, while the rest of the (white heterosexual) neighborhood is made up of shallow, repressed, slothful, self-loathing, voyeuristic sickos. American Beauty is compelling in a trashy soap opera kind of way, but it has a self-important air that you may find off-putting. Mendes and company treat every goddamned scene like they’re blowing the lid off of something scandalous, but the film is about as earth-shaking as a Bazooka Joe comic. American Beauty would make for a fitting contribution to a time capsule commemorating the good ol’ Clinton years and its legacy of trickle-down immorality. 

© Copyright 2008 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.