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American Beauty

American Beauty (1999)

tomatometer

88

Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 153
Fresh: 135 | Rotten: 18

Flawlessly cast and brimming with dark, acid wit, American Beauty is a smart, provocative high point of late '90s mainstream Hollywood film.

91

Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 3

Flawlessly cast and brimming with dark, acid wit, American Beauty is a smart, provocative high point of late '90s mainstream Hollywood film.

audience

90

liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 572,226

My Rating

Movie Info

Noted theater director Sam Mendes, who was responsible for the acclaimed 1998 revival of Cabaret and Nicole Kidman's turn in The Blue Room, made his motion picture debut with this film about the dark side of an American family, and about the nature and price of beauty in a culture obsessed with outward appearances. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a man in his mid-40s going through an intense midlife crisis; he's grown cynical and is convinced that he has no reason to go on. Lester's

R, 2 hr.

Drama, Comedy

Alan Ball

Jan 2, 2002

Dream Works

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 Source: New York Observer | Comments (2)
New York Observer
Top Critic IconTop Critic

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

June 18, 2002 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comment
San Francisco Chronicle
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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 Source: Globe and Mail | Comment
Globe and Mail
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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
Rolling Stone
Top Critic IconTop 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 Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A millennial classic.

January 1, 2000 Comment
Boston Globe
Top Critic IconTop 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 Source: 2UE That Movie Show | Comment

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

March 23, 2011 Full Review Source: Antagony & Ecstasy | Comment
Antagony & Ecstasy

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

September 14, 2010 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media | Comments (7)
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 Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

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 Source: AskMen.com | Comment

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 Source: Slant Magazine | Comments (16)
Slant Magazine

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

February 20, 2008 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

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

July 23, 2007 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
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 Source: Big Picture Big Sound | Comment
Big Picture Big Sound

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

May 23, 2007 Full Review Source: Film Freak Central | Comments (5)
Film Freak Central

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

January 4, 2007 Comment
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 Source: Arizona Daily Star | Comment
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 Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

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

May 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | Comment
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 Source: Time Out | Comment

This is what movies are all about.

April 9, 2005 Full Review Source: Reeling Reviews | Comment
Reeling Reviews

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

March 3, 2005 Comments (10)

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

February 16, 2005 Full Review | Comments (2)
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for American Beauty

American Beauty is close to a pure masterpiece. Superb acting from Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. Along with a unique soundtrack and fantastic story,this lovely film will show you not just an outlook on American life, but to 'look closer' at everything in life. This is true to being an original and beautiful film

November 16, 2011
Samuel Riley
Samuel Riley

Super Reviewer

It is very difficult to describe my emotions throughout this film, but there was not a frame in this film where I didn't have a warm feeling in my heart. Through the darkest of times and through the happiest of times throughout this film, I felt connected to each and every character who contributed into the foundation

September 25, 2010
KJ Proulx

Super Reviewer

    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)

Latest News for American Beauty

December 1, 2010:
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May 29, 2008:
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With this Friday's Stuck, Mena Suvari adds another strange chapter to the decidedly un-Hollywood...

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