American Beauty (Widescreen Edition) | Annette Bening, Thora Birch

American Beauty (Widescreen Edition) | Annette Bening, Thora Birch | We love it!

DVDs:

American Beauty (W...

	American Beauty (Widescreen Edition) Annette Bening, Thora Birch Dreamworks Video, 2000 average customer review:based on 1128 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I finally get it

When I first saw this film years ago in the theater, I left thinking that it was just okay. I certainly didn't see why it garnered so much critical acclaim. Then a funny thing happened...time. Now in my mid thirties and being a homeowner, I realize I know and recognize many of the characters and dysfunctional behaviors in this film. I'm familiar with the longing to go back when you felt like your whole life was ahead of you. My first job was also in the fast food industry for very little money--and you know what? It was one of the happier times in my life. Responsibilities weren't so heavy and no matter what my parents just didn't get me. Annette Bennings's character suddenly have so much depth to me. The extremes to which people go to hide their personal darkness-isn't satire but reality. Sure this is a film where you can pick apart everyone's flaws-and there are plenty to go around-but I think one point of the movie is: that we all have them. We are never what we seem. Overall: highly recommended.

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We love it!

This is one of our favorite movies (mine and my husband's). The end is a little confusing the first time you see it, but the movie is excellent. In 2004, I watched it three times in one weekend while writing a paper for a Lit class, and still loved it on Monday. The deadpan delivery of Kevin Spacey is perfection. When he catches his wife cheating and says "...you don't get to tell me what to do--ever again." He could not have said it better.
Kevin Spacey portrays perfectly the average suburban man who is BORED with his life and is at the point at which he doesn't care who knows it.
See this movie!

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Awewsome!

One of my all-time favorite movies. Disturbing, yes, (don't watch w/ the kids)but hilarious and tragic ath the same time.

overrated and unconvincing

This film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but I thought it was weak. Every character in the film is pathologically dysfunctional, but the bad part is that they are superficial, predictable, and unbelievable stereotypes. Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), age 42, is a loser, and he knows he is a loser. His wife and teenage daughter hate him, for good reasons. Not to worry, he rejuvenates himself by seducing Angela, his daughter's best friend, quitting his job, working out and drinking smoothies, listening to Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan, smoking dope, throwing dishes against the wall, getting a new job at Smiley's Hamburgers, and buying a 1970 Pontiac Firebird. Self destruction as personal makeover? Life is beautiful, as he proclaims at the end of the film? Yeah, right. His wife Carolyn is an obsessive phony who lives only for image and finds her own authenticity by bedding her chief real estate competitor. Daughter Jane runs off with the next door classmate, Ricky, a drug dealing voyeur who spent two years in a mental hospital because of his abusive Marine Colonel dad who wrongly thinks he is gay, even while, apparently, he himself is gay. The real, token gay couple lives a few houses down. Just your average suburban neighborhood. Mid life crises are not funny, and it is too bad that director Sam Mendes did not help Lester deal with his in an interesting or compelling way.

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