Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Hype can be a cruel thing. If a film is built up to such an extent, be it through a studio, a PR man, or even just media expectation, and then fails to cash in, then people’s clarity is a little misty. Take “American Beauty”, a film that – here in the UK at least – was glorified to such an extent (thanks largely to director Sam Mendes previous involvement with Nicole Kidman in stage play “The Blue Room”) that unless the final product was anything less than sensational, awe-inspiring, beautiful even, then it would simply not be acceptable.

As if this wasn’t enough to shoulder, the film also had to justify its numerous awards, including a board-sweeping movement at the 2000 Oscars, and acclaim from many critics as “the first masterpiece of the new Millennium” - Empire Magazine). Not so much anticipation as wild expectancy then.

And how does “American Beauty” fare? What is the final product? Well, in a word… acceptable. Very acceptable. For the British director’s exceptional take on pre-millennial American ordinary people going nuts is simultaneously achingly funny and bitingly moving.

“American Beauty” is almost impossible to define accurately: it has elements of black comedy, and even resembles a crime thriller at times. Essentially, though, it is a spoof on American suburban life, with Lester Burnam (Kevin Spacey) as a burnt out magazine journalist who gets a boner for his daughter’s best friend, Angela Haze (Mena Suvari), and decides to take control of his life, an existence that essentially is little more than jerking off while fantasising about a life that less closely resembles Hell. In other words, he’s an ordinary guy with nothing to lose. Meanwhile, his power-drive wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is distraught by both her non-conformist work life and family and seeks solace in the arms of “Real Estate King” Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), while daughter Jane (Thora Birch) embarks on a romance with creepy Camcorder-wielding drug-dealer Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) next door.

Had “American Beauty” been made released years ago, chances are it would have been a DTV film starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, with Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Tori Spelling and Breckin Meyer in the support roles, directed by John Hughes, and with a script by Ariel Dorfman. In other words, in less capable hands, this will have been a barrel full of sh*te. So it’s to the credit of both Mendes and scripter Alan Ball that not only is “American Beauty” something truly special, something different, something you’d normally expect to be a schmaltz-prone Hollywood solid, but is such an incredibly deep, meaningful and – godammit – delightfully picturesque feature, that not only rises above it’s own hype, but dumps on it from a great height.

Don't be deceived by appearances. “American Beauty” may look like yet another Middle American family drama, with tears, laughter, rifts and reconciliation’s, but it isn't. Yes, it has family drama (well, kind of...), set in Middle America and, yes, there are laughter and tears and rifts - although it soon becomes obvious that there won't be much in the way of compromise. But, unusually for such people-focused comedy-drama is the flamboyant visual style. So we have, amongst Burnham's sexual and human reawakening, dreamy visions of Suvari opulently smothered with nothing but scarlet rose petals, filling the screen with so much sexual tension that we – the lucky, lucky viewer – is pretty much fit to burst. Moreover, Mendes also paints his affluent Stepford-Wives-esque village with a delightfully worn-down quality, all submersed colours and bland walls.

Additionally, by allowing oddball teen neighbour Bentley to constantly Camcord the world around him, Mendes provides himself with ample opportunity to play cool games with shots within shots. While some of his reasoning is as strange as they come – a dead bird is, after all, a dead bird – he unleashes one of cinema’s most beautiful moments, a simple plastic bag blowing in the wind. Never has synthetic been so exquisite.

Unquestionably though, is that Mendes’ ace in the pack, Spacey, gives one of his best – if not, the best – on-screen representations of a man who is sick of letting life pass him by. His transformation, from quiet spineless crumpled husband, to a simpering, salivating boy-man, to a take-no-sh*t, iron pumping supremely self-confident forty-something slacker hero is a transition of breathtaking proportions, an amazing, heart warming and, indeed, incredibly beautiful vision. Funny, shocking, and overall brilliant, Spacey was worth his Oscar nod and much much more.

Bening, meanwhile, throws all her acting energy into playing the immaculately pithy Carolyn, her snappy and superficial persona so OTT that it’s easy to see how Lester would grow to find her so repellent, yet resisting what could have been an all-too-easy slide into caricature.

There are a few problems, admittedly, most of them from the grim family next door. Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) is an absolute cartoon of a character - a retired soldier who is not only dim enough to believe that his son’s plush lifestyle comes from dead-end waiting jobs, but is a suspiciously repressed self-loathing homosexual who collects Nazi memorabilia and regularly uses violence with which to keep his son and wife in check. He’ll be the “bad man”, then. The teen collective fare little better, being a group of ludicrously self-aware adolescents who spout Dawson-like cr*p such as “At least I'm not ugly!” “Yes you are. And you're boring. And you're totally ordinary. And you know it.”

The finale, which relies perhaps a little too much on 'whodunnit' rather than the underlying moral that - hey - life is pretty great, is a tad too sentimental and could have done with a little less gushing, and more in the way of resolution. Saying that, the hinted notion (it's the small things in life that make a person) is brilliantly realised and could provide the more sensitive viewer with ample material to shed a tear over.

Still, they say the best beauty is flawed beauty, and if you forgives its silliness, “American Beauty” remains a deeply funny comedy and a must for Spacey fans. While the outcome is obvious from the first line of Lester's thankfully unintrusive voiceover, you can never work out exactly how you're going to get there. But what is certain is that “American Beauty” is a profoundly satisfying piece of cinema which works its way inside you, grabs hold of your heart and simply refuses to let go.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age