this whole american beauty thing happened because i was joking around with communicants about how everything is fine in blogger-land until you start trashing a popular movie and then everyone hates you. i was like ‘lol who cares’ but he was sort of right.
anyway, this got me to thinking & i decided that if i had any integrity at all, i’d rewatch american beauty to see if it sucked as much as i remember it sucking. it really, really did. so here are some thoughts on that:
i think the main take-away from rewatching this film is that it wildly off the mark in so many areas, but chiefly, in its depiction of human behavior. it is overtly writerly, in the way of a freshman year screenplay by a kid who is inexplicably angry about his privilege and Thinks He Knows What’s Up. rewatching it, it struck me that american beauty is a teenager’s idea of what adults are like and an adult’s idea of what teenagers are like. both are outrageously off-base and the combination of juvenile cynicism and middle-aged faux-profundity (and vice versa) is truly laughable.
speaking of laughable, this film surely has the most howlers in its script than any other best picture winner (besides, maybe, CRASH). just a SAMPLE of terrible, cringe-worthy lines i wrote down while watching:
"what a lame-o" (opening lines)
"in a way, I’m dead already" (PLZ! the entire omniscient narration is hideous)
"this country is going straight to hell" is a line of dialogue used for character development bc subtlety who cares right
the incredible lolita-esque rootbeer exchange ("ooh is that root beer? I looove root beer don’t you?”)
wes bentley’s "welcome to America’s weeeirdest home videos," a line so terrible, it should disqualify this movie from plaudits till the end of time
spacey to suvari: “You like Pink Floyd???” wow what a cool teenager you are not like the other teenagers
"beep me anytime, day or night" (in a universe where drugs are gay and beepers are cool!)
"I’m just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose" is an actual line of dialogue in this movie that re-states the theme for the MILLIONTH TIME
"I was filming this dead bird…because it’s beautiful"
"the bag was just…dancing with me" (we don’t even have TIME to go into the groaning awfulness of the infamous Plastic Bag Scene…my heart can’t take it!)
bening’s mid-coital “fuck me, your majesty” (this line is actually great)
"I don’t think there’s anything worse than being ordinary" you know alan ball thinks he’s a genius
and the final shit-topping on turd mountain, spacey’s closing omniscient narration, "It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world" (smdh), in which he addresses an unnamed "you" because he’s Teaching You A Lesson do you get it
Carpe the Diem by fucking teenage girls and smoking weed, guys you will get shot in the head by a virulent homophobe but it’ll be okay bc you’ll be a Cool Martyr Who Played By His Own Rules
i mean, i haven’t even talked about how awful this movie treats its female characters. just to sum up:
a financially comfortable white guy hates his life so he treats his daughter and wife horribly to feel FREE and he’s so FREE that he decides Quit His Job (so brave) and to try to fuck his daughter’s underage bff (so noble)
the dude’s wife decides to engage in an affair with another man because she’s being ignored & maligned at home and the film still treats this, not as a victory for personal freedom as it does for kevin spacey, but as a betrayal of her family. she’s a whore and a bad wife and mother. kevin spacey is cool.
the daughter (thora birch) is portrayed as being complicit in her creepy neighbor’s voyeurism and borderline stalking behavior. in fact, she LOVES it.
the daughter’s friend (mena suvari) is portrayed as being complicit, encouraging—even begging—for kevin spacey’s creepy affections. suvari’s character’s self-worth is defined by her sexual objectification but really she’s just A Sad Virgin. she gets to be madonna AND whore, but never a real person of any believable substance.
allison janey as the ‘not all there’ wife of chris cooper’s character. always around when the story needs her, especially when her husband or son needs some Character Development.
BONUS AWFULNESS: kevin spacey gets his groove back by hanging out with the neighborhood gays! so helpful, those neighborhood gays.
the counterargument to this entire critique of course, is that american beauty is a comedy. hey, dude, it’s a SATIRE of AMERICAN LIFE. because the suburbs suck, maaaan. if you want to experience a truly black comedy about the “dark side of american suburbs,” it needs to embrace the true weirdness, cruelty and INEXPLICABLY of human capriciousness. if you want a film that explores this, watch BLUE VELVET. american beauty is the IDEA of complexity wrapped up in metaphor with a nice, neat, shit-eating grin of a bow on top. there is nothing here that resembles a human being in any way. which wouldn’t bother me, except that it purports to be about the truth of human beings & their interactions in a way which is monstrously disingenuous.
the worst part of this is that the actors in this film are by & large very talented and capable of doing great things. and it was shot by conrad hall, for god’s sake!! but there’s no disguising this turd sandwich of a script.
but, i mean, this movie won 5 oscars and made $350+ million worldwide, so fuck me, right?
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