American Beauty (1999)
Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 155
Fresh: 137 | Rotten: 18
Flawlessly cast and brimming with dark, acid wit, American Beauty is a smart, provocative high point of late '90s mainstream Hollywood film.
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 36
Fresh: 33 | Rotten: 3
Flawlessly cast and brimming with dark, acid wit, American Beauty is a smart, provocative high point of late '90s mainstream Hollywood film.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 651,716
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
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Cast
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Kevin Spacey
Lester Burnham -
Annette Bening
Caroline Burnham -
Thora Birch
Jane Burnham -
Wes Bentley
Ricky Fitts -
Mena Suvari
Angela Hayes -
Chris Cooper
Colonel Fitts -
Peter Gallagher
Buddy Kane -
Allison Janney
Barbara Fitts -
Scott Bakula
Jim Olmeyer -
Sam Robards
Jim Berkley -
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All Critics (155) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (137) | Rotten (18) | DVD (39)
This amazing and impassioned fantasia about American loneliness begins as satire and ends with a vision of the sublime.
Top CriticAs 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.
Director Mendes guides an artful path between desire and self-disgust, playing youth against experience, male against female.
An astonishingly assured first feature from transatlantic theater whiz kid Sam Mendes.
A great, tremendously entertaining experience. I only wish there were more films this satisfying.
This is definitely a knife-to-the-heart movie -- the kind whose potent effect is easy to feel yet hard to describe.
American Beauty is a profoundly satisfying piece of cinema which works its way inside you, grabs hold of your heart and simply refuses to let go.
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.
Cripplingly broad, with network-sitcom beats dressed in R-rated threads... [endorses] a particularly adolescent male point of view.
Powerful acting, great story, but far too mature for kids.
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.
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
One of the most startling, brilliant pictures to come out of a major studio in many years.
An elusive and allusive work of art that won't be pinned down easily.
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.
It's like Norman Bates getting good advice from Mother.
An incisive if over-the-top take on familial dysfunction.
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.
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.
Dark, intelligent, scandalous, emotional, and truthful -- one of the year's best.
This is what movies are all about.
Complexity, say quite a few of my colleagues. Lies, I say.
As the world changed in the past five years, so did the relevance of American Beauty.
Audience Reviews for American Beauty
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Movies Like American Beauty
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- Ricky Fitts: But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.
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- Ricky Fitts: It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.
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- Ricky Fitts: She's not your friend. She's just someone you use to feel better about yourself.
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- Ricky Fitts: It's like God's looking right at you, just for a second, and if you're careful... you can look right back.
- Jane Burnham: And what do you see?
- Ricky Fitts: Beauty.
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- Jane Burnham: Look mom, I really don't feel like having a Kodak moment here, OK?
- Caroline Burnham: (slaps her) You ungrateful little brat. Just look at everything you have. When I was your age, we lived in a duplex. We didn't even have our own house.
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- Lester Burnham: I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about I'm sure, but don't worry, you will someday.
Discussion Forum
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Foreign Titles
- Belleza Americana (ES)
