Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley and Mena Suvari
You Can Find Beauty Everywhere You Look
I finally got to go see this movie (it wasn't showing in my town for some stupid reason). American Beauty pretty much has everything you want to see in a movie... a good script, lots of funny stuff, great acting, and an ending that forces you to leave the theater thinking. I finally figured out why this was such an anticipated movie (at least by me), because it was well worth the wait.
Lester (Kevin Spacey) works out to impress a girl
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey, L.A. Confidential, The Usual Suspects) is an ordinary guy in suburban America. He lives on a nice tree lined street, in a nice house with his lovely wife Carolyn (Annette Bening, The American President, The Great Outdoors) and his sixteen year old daughter Jane (Thora Birch, Now and Then). He is a little too ordinary, in fact he is down right boring. He is trapped in what appears to be a boring and loveless marriage, his daughter kind of despises him and he is stuck in a fairly pointless job where he is underappreciated. But all that starts to change after he sees Jane's friend Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari, American Pie). He becomes infatuated by Angela and begins fantasizing about her (I know it's gross, but once you get past the queziness you'll be OK). Another person that influence the lives of the Burhham's is their new next door neighbor Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley, Beloved). We first meet Ricky when he is videotaping the Burnhams (mostly Jane) through their windows, pretty creepy huh? We then learn that he is a drug dealer in this small burb, and that he has quite a little fortune accrued for himself. First Ricky gets Lester back into smoking pot (apparently something that he really liked to do back in the day), and then he gets Jane to fall in love with him, while still supplying half the known world with several different kinds of pot.
Carolyn trims her prize roses
Up until now, you could just start to chalk this up to a really quirky neighborhood with a few really weird people, but then everything starts to change. Lester quits his stupid job and blackmails the boss for a full years salary as severance pay, then he starts working out and smoking up to impress Angela with his new body and personality. Carolyn becomes infatuated with another real estate agent (did I mention that she is a real estate agent?), played by Peter Gallagher (While You Were Sleeping, Sex, Lies, and Videotape) and eventually starts having an affair with him. Jane and Ricky's little love thing gets weirder and more twisted while all Angela wants to do is be desired and become a model, which is why she doesn't mind Lester's obvious advances. And just to throw a nice little subplot in, Ricky's father Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper, Great Expectations, A Time To Kill) is a fairly violent father who begins to suspect that Ricky is actually gay (an atrocity to a former Marine) and is selling his body to Lester, instead of his pot. And all of this happens before it really starts to get interesting.
Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), Jane Burnham (Thora Birch) and Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari)
Although American Beauty is about ordinary people with fairly ordinary lives, it comes together to form a movie that is nothing short of extraordinary. As twisted as the plot sounds (which I didn't do a very good job of describing, but it is still pretty twisted) it is one of the things that really holds the film together. Other great things about this movie are the comedy, the characters and especially the acting. At times this movie can be very dark, and overall I wouldn't really call this a comedy, but it is so funny simply because you can believe what is really happening because it is so real. The characters were extremely well developed. Not just Lester with his midlife crisis, but Carolyn with her mental problems, and how her life has changed since she was a young adult living the crazy life, and Jane who is desperately trying to survive the embarrassment of Lester and Carolyn as parents, and Ricky who is just looking for the beauty in life (while trying to sell a little "herbal therapy" on the side), and Angela who wants to be anything but normal and is willing to use her sexuality to show that she isn't. All of the characters are real, with real motivations and very real problems. As great as the characters are, it is the acting that really makes American Beauty a must see. The supporting actors are great, even the sleezy Peter Gallagher and the creepy Chris Cooper, and Annette Benning and Kevin Spacey prove once again that they are top actors in Hollywood. I was especially impressed by Kevin Spacey. He is already one of my favorite actors (behind people like Dustin Hoffman and Anthony Hopkins) after performances like The Usual Suspects (which he won an Oscar for). Well he is going to have to make some more space on his mantle, because Oscar is going to have a little playmate. The character of Lester is so real and so funny, and it's almost completely because of Spacey. All in all, American Beauty will fit the bill if you are looking for a great comedy, a great date movie, or even a great drama... and unles you are completely cynical you will love it.
