American Beauty (1999)

All Critics (154) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (142) | Rotten (18) | DVD (39)

As the latest mainstream movie symptom of our premillennial malaise, American Beauty is so brilliantly acted, written, directed and visualized that for all its despondency and despair, it is a lot of fun.

April 27, 2007 Full Review | Comments (2)

Andrew Sarris

New York Observer

Top Critic

A great, tremendously entertaining experience. I only wish there were more films this satisfying.

June 18, 2002 Full Review | Comment

Edward Guthmann

San Francisco Chronicle

Top Critic

This is definitely a knife-to-the-heart movie -- the kind whose potent effect is easy to feel yet hard to describe.

March 19, 2002 Full Review | Comment

Rick Groen

Globe and Mail

Top Critic

The kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts.

May 22, 2001 Comment

Peter Travers

Rolling Stone

Top Critic

An acerbic, darkly comic critique of how social conventions can lead people into false, sterile and emotionally stunted lives, American Beauty is a real American original.

January 1, 2000 Full Review | Comment

Todd McCarthy

Variety

Top Critic

A millennial classic.

January 1, 2000 Comment

Jay Carr

Boston Globe

Top Critic

American Beauty was a deserving best picture and Lester's rich existential journey and social commentary of modern America peels away the inauthentic and superficial to reveal the epic allure in a bleak suburbia.

May 7, 2012 Full Review | Comment

Blake Howard

2UE That Movie Show

Cripplingly broad, with network-sitcom beats dressed in R-rated threads... [endorses] a particularly adolescent male point of view.

March 23, 2011 Full Review | Comment

Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

Powerful acting, great story, but far too mature for kids.

September 14, 2010 Full Review | Comments (7)

Nell Minow

Common Sense Media

Among other special features of the Blu-ray DVD version, Sam Mendes' commentary is truly intelligent and illuminating.

August 21, 2010 Full Review | Comment

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

The flaws that exist in American Beauty are effortlessly overcome by a cast that blossoms. Spacey in particular exhibits a rare wit and gravitas with Lester's weary frowns and cutting smirks, proving his mettle in this career peak performance.

June 7, 2010 Full Review | Comment

Radheyan Simonpillai

AskMen.com

It's daring in that it sympathizes with a protagonist who's a pederast though its portrait of an American family on the brink of collapse is essentially a cartoon

June 5, 2008 Full Review | Comments (16)

Ed Gonzalez

Slant Magazine

One of the most startling, brilliant pictures to come out of a major studio in many years.

February 20, 2008 Full Review | Comment

Film4

An elusive and allusive work of art that won't be pinned down easily.

July 23, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Rob Gonsalves

eFilmCritic.com

Recently, Happiness and Election have taken pot shots at suburban morals and ethics, but none has hit so close to the bone and so on-target as American Beauty.

July 14, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Joe Lozito

Big Picture Big Sound

It's like Norman Bates getting good advice from Mother.

May 23, 2007 Full Review | Comments (5)

Walter Chaw

Film Freak Central

An incisive if over-the-top take on familial dysfunction.

January 4, 2007 Comment

Wesley Lovell

Oscar Guy

Above all, "American Beauty" is about finding peace and a sense of wonder in the least likely of places, such as your inner torment or, failing that, perhaps a floating plastic bag.

August 25, 2006 Full Review | Comment

Phil Villarreal

Arizona Daily Star

Brit Sam Mendes makes an impressive directorial debut with a glossy, well-acted satire of the American burbs, a theatrically stylized meditation that combines the zeitgeist of 1950s Eisnehower with that of 1990s Clinton.

July 29, 2006 Full Review | Comment

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

Dark, intelligent, scandalous, emotional, and truthful -- one of the year's best.

May 26, 2006 Full Review | Comment

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

Director Mendes guides an artful path between desire and self-disgust, playing youth against experience, male against female.

February 9, 2006 Full Review | Comment

Geoff Andrew

Time Out

This is what movies are all about.

April 9, 2005 Full Review | Comment

Robin Clifford

Reeling Reviews

Complexity, say quite a few of my colleagues. Lies, I say.

March 3, 2005 Comments (10)

Stuart Klawans

Nation

As the world changed in the past five years, so did the relevance of American Beauty.

February 16, 2005 Full Review | Comments (2)

Dragan Antulov

Draxblog Movie Reviews

• 1. Lester Burnham: This isn't life, it's just stuff. And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts.
  – Submitted by Kev G (31 days ago)
• 1. Ricky Fitts: She's not your friend, she's someone you use to feel better about yourself!
  2. Angela Hayes: Go fuck yourself psycho!
  3. Jane Burnham: Hey shut up bitch!
  4. Angela Hayes: Jane, he's a freak!
  5. Jane Burnham: Well than so am I, and we'll always be freaks and never be like other people, and you'll never be a freak, because you're too .. perfect.
  6. Angela Hayes: Yeah, well, at least I'm not ugly.
  7. Ricky Fitts: Yes you are .. and you're boring .. and you're totally ordinary .. and you know it.
  8. Angela Hayes: You two deserve each other.
  – Submitted by Cheyne L (2 months ago)
• 1. Ricky Fitts: If I had to leave tonight, would you come with me?
  2. Jane Burnham: What?
  3. Ricky Fitts: If I had to go to New York, to live, would you come with me?
  4. Jane Burnham: Yes.
  5. Angela Hayes: You guys can't be serious, you're just a kid, and he's, like, a mental case, you'll end up living in a box on the street!
  6. Jane Burnham: I'm no more a kid than you are! .. We can use my plastic surgery money.
  7. Colonel Fitts: We won't have to, I have over $40,000 and I know people in the city who can help us get set up.
  8. Angela Hayes: What, other drug dealers?
  9. Ricky Fitts: Yes!
  – Submitted by Cheyne L (2 months ago)
• 1. Angela Hayes: You're way to uptight about sex!
  2. Jane Burnham: Just don't fuck my dad, alright!? Please!?
  3. Angela Hayes: Why not?
  – Submitted by Cheyne L (2 months ago)
• 1. Caroline Burnham: That was exactly what I needed .. the royal treatment, so to speak .. Ugh! I was so stressed out! Ahhh .. ah ... ah! (laughs)
  2. Buddy Kane: You know what I do when I feel like that?
  3. Caroline Burnham: What?
  4. Buddy Kane: I fire a gun .. oh yeah, I go to this little firing range downtown and I .. just pop of a few rounds.
  5. Caroline Burnham: I've never fired a gun before.
  6. Buddy Kane: Well you've got to try it .. nothing makes you feel more powerful .. well, almost nothing.
  – Submitted by Cheyne L (2 months ago)