Review of American Beauty (1999) by Austin N — 24 Sep 2018

1999 was a really good year for filmmaking. Many amazing hit movies were released that year, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Toy Story 2. Some movies released that year, people didn't like too much, but now it has a cult following, Fight club (one of my all time favorites), Eyes Wide Shut, The Mummy.

And, there are movies released that year that many might say overrated, The Blair Witch Project, and the movie I'll be talking about today, American Beauty. This movie won best picture at the 2000 academy awards, and I found that out before watching the film.

Throughout watching American Beauty, I kept wondering to myself, HOW DID THIS MOVIE GET BEST PICTURE WTFFFF. Well, I guess the academy awards in 2000 just thought that a movie like American Beauty is outstanding.

As you can tell, I'm not a particularly huge fan of this movie. I'm not saying it's a bad movie, because it's not, but I don't think this movie is a masterpiece as some people have said.

Let's start off with my biggest issue with the movie, the mood and tone of the movie just didn't sit right with the plot. The plot is considered creepy and weird, but the movie is a drama-comedy.

Weird and drama-comedy don't mesh together very well, as presented in this movie. It's like trying to get 2 of the same poles on 2 magnets to attract to each other, IT DOESN'T WORK. I also didn't like a lot of Kevin Spacey's narration in this movie.

It kind of spoils things that happens later in the movie, and I didn't like that. This isn't a con, but the scene where Ricky Fitts shows Lester's daughter the video of the flying bag was so unintentionally funny.

The first time I watched the movie with my cousin, we laughed our asses off so hard. It was superbly unintentionally funny, I loved it. I'm glad that scene exists because it's so funny and memorable.

Now, let's get into the pros of this movie. I'm really glad that this movie won best original screenplay at the academy, because the screenplay is really damn good. The information we need to know in this movie is presented so creatively, it blows my mind.

If you watched the first Lessons On The Screenplay video on this movie, it goes over the creative methods used in the screenplay, and it is really nuts what Alan Ball did with this screenplay. The first dinner table scene in this movie is so memorable not just because it was intense, but because we learned just enough about these characters in a few exchanges of dialogue.

The acting was phenomenal, especially Kevin Spacey's performance. I also like how the movie doesn't answer its questions that are brought up, because we the audience can have our own interpretation about what happens next.

I think this is a really well made film. If the movie just got its tone and mood aligned with the plot, it could've been way better. 8/10.