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American Beauty
Directed by
Sam Mendes
R
1999
2h 2m
Drama
8.3
87%
93%
8.0
Add to Watchlist
A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.
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Where to Watch American Beauty
Hoopla
Free
Pluto TV
Free
fuboTV
Subscription
+8 more
Cast of American Beauty
Kevin Spacey
Lester Burnham
Annette Bening
Carolyn Burnham
Thora Birch
Jane Burnham
Wes Bentley
Ricky Fitts
Mena Suvari
Angela Hayes
Peter Gallagher
Buddy Kane
Allison Janney
Barbara Fitts
Chris Cooper
Colonel Fitts
Scott Bakula
Jim Olmeyer
Sam Robards
Jim Berkley
Barry Del Sherman
Brad
Ara Celi
Sale House Woman #1
John Cho
Sale House Man #1
Hal Fort Atkinson
Sale House Man #2
Sue Casey
Sale House Woman #2
Kent Faulcon
Sale House Man #3
Brenda Wehle
Sale House Woman #4
Lisa Cloud
Sale House Woman #4
Alison Faulk
Spartanette #1
Krista Goodsitt
Spartanette #2
American Beauty Ratings & Reviews
CNN.com
Paul Clinton (CNN.com)
American Beauty is deeply disturbing, acerbically funny, brilliantly acted, breathtakingly original and highly sophisticated.
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
A tightly coiled rage seethes beneath the pretty surface of American Beauty, a wickedly funny black comedy directed by newcomer Sam Mendes.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Jeff Strickler
This is Spacey's best performance since he took home an Oscar for The Usual Suspects.
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Why, then, did I enjoy it so little? Because of its unrelenting self-importance: American Beauty wants us to know, in every shot at every turn, just how clever and mercilessly cutting it is.
Observer
Rex Reed
Kevin Spacey gives the performance of his life.
Seattle Times
John Hartl
Alan Ball's script is a terrific piece of material, and Mendes responds directly to its subversive, provocative vision of a curdled American Dream.
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
American Beauty approaches a manic, almost cartoonish edge without falling over. Both Spacey and Bening use extraordinary comic timing to bring these very sad, lost characters to life.
Orlando Sentinel
Jay Boyar
[The filmmakers'] attacks on real-estate agents, corporate America and suburbia aren't so much shooting fish in a barrel as they are shooting fish in a shallow dish.
TIME Magazine
Richard Schickel
Boldly challenging our sympathies, [Lester] somehow wins them because, to borrow a phrase, he's a man in full.
Slate
David Edelstein
The hairpin turns from farce to melodrama, from satire to bathos, are fresh and deftly navigated, but almost every one of the underlying attitudes is smug and easy.
AV Club
Scott Tobias
Mendes and screenwriter Alan Ball, both making their feature debuts, resort to a few heavy-handed tactics to get their points across, but their sheer audacity is so exhilarating it hardly matters.
The New Yorker
David Denby
This amazing and impassioned fantasia about American loneliness begins as satire and ends with a vision of the sublime.
Common Sense Media
Nell Minow
Powerful acting, great story, but far too mature for kids.
AskMen.com
Radheyan Simonpillai
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.
Slant Magazine
Ed Gonzalez
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
Observer
Andrew Sarris
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.
L.A. Weekly
Ella Taylor
An astonishingly assured first feature from transatlantic theater whiz kid Sam Mendes.
San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann
A great, tremendously entertaining experience. I only wish there were more films this satisfying.
Decent Films
Steven D. Greydanus
There is beauty to which this movie is stone cold blind: beauty it tramples on as ignorantly as Buddy Kane or Col. Fitts.
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
The kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts.
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