Could it be that a movie sympathizes with people you wouldn't let babysit your kids -- and still succeeds as a movie?
"American Beauty": Disgusting, soul-sick and scornful of normal people. Also a really well-made movie.
No...if it stinks at its core, it's a stinker.
(I find distasteful the need ordinary smucks -- you and me, I presume -- often have to stand above-it-all, learned and sophisticated in our resposes to movies (film, i.e.), so worldly as to be able to overlook, in the higher service of "art," what is repugnant. Spare me.)
I don't really care. I'm just taking the opportunity to tell a bunch of gay jokes.
Have you read the story from whence the film's script was adapted? Read the story and save yourself the ticket price and the unpleasant viewing experience.
You can find it on the internet, the story by the same name, and the film is a direct representation of the story.
My daughter is a writer and she loved the movie American Beauty. She even went and bought a copy of the screen play. All she talked about and hounded me to go and see it. I am not for going and paying hard earn money to see movies that offend me. She said she would pay for my movie ticket and then told me all the stuff that she knew I would not like. Her and I went to see the movie and as I expected I did not like it. When she asked me if I liked it or not I told her it was not very creative at all it was just reflecting the cultural aspects of what is going on today in America. Or what hollywood thinks is normal. she got so mad because I didn't see the genius in it. For me a movie should not go out of its way to push some kind of an agenda that hollywood like to portray as normal. In the opening scene in American Beauty the chracter is masterbating, yep that takes a real genius. And how creative and I am suppose to pay out $9.00 to see that creative genius? I love her and she is talented but she can't get past the hollywood genius thinking.
I'll grant that it had excellent cinematography, art direction and score. But it was horribly written. Not quite up to "really well-made". More like a pig that is slightly better looking because it's wearing lipstick.