Review of American Beauty

[Some possible spoilers ahead...] The thing I enjoyed most about `American Beauty' (**) was that it gives an experienced moviegoer an opportunity to play the game of pointing out all the cliches, stereotypes and caricatures contained in it by naming some of the (usually better) old movies that could have inspired it. For example(s): (1) the middle-aged executive who drops out of his job and marriage and reverts back to his adolescence (`The Arrangement,' `The Swimmer,' `All Night Long'); 2) the discontented , anal-retentive housewife (`Harriet Craig,' `Ordinary People,' `Diary of a Mad Housewife'); 3) the rigidly disciplined military man who turns out to be a closet homosexual (`The Sergeant,' `Reflections in a Golden Eye'); 4) the flirty teenage sexpot who turns out to be a virgin (`Lolita,' `The Last Picture Show'); 5) the rebellious son/daughter who hates his/her parents (too many youth-slanted teenflix to name); 6) the voyeuristic drug dealing boy next door, who seems to have stepped out of a David Lynch movie; 7) the gay male couple next door, who seem to be the happiest and best-adjusted characters in the film (a new politically correct cliché); and last but hardly least, let us not forget 8) the supposed horror of affluent living in the suburbs ("Loving," "The Graduate," "The Chase," "No Down Payment," "The Ice Storm," etc. etc.). Kevin Spacey is fun to watch in the scenes in which he makes some drastic changes in his life, but Annette Bening is much too hysterically shrill as his wife (the only character in the script who isn't given any slack whatsoever). I hated the coy and unnecessary way in which the director plays games with the audience over the demise of the Spacey character, and I couldn't help but think that if everyone in the household had just kept their blinds closed at night, this contrived story wouldn't have been made at all. And then finally, after all the snide cynicism we've endured, comes a conclusion that would be right at home on a Hallmark card: we should all be more aware of the beauty in the world. My favorite scene: Annette Bening giving Thora Birch as her sullen, `ungrateful brat' of a daughter a resounding slap, something I had been wanting to do for quite some time.