Search - American Beauty on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Violence, Nudity, Not For Children, Adult Humor, Profanity, Sexual Situations, Drug Content Movie Release: 1999 DVD Release: 10/24/2000 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Edition: Dual Layered,Special Collection Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 2 mins Studio: DreamWorks Total Copies: 95 Genres: Comedy Drama, Tragi-comedy, Family Drama, Coming-of-Age See Also: American Beauty [Widescreen]

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 relationship with his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is not a warm one; while on the surface Carolyn strives to present the image that she's in full control of her life, inside she feels empty and desperate. Their teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is constantly depressed, lacking in self-esteem, and convinced that she's unattractive. Her problems aren't helped by her best friend Angela (Mena Suvari), an aspiring model who is quite beautiful and believes that that alone makes her a worthwhile person. Jane isn't the only one who has noticed that Angela is attractive: Lester has fallen into uncontrollable lust for her, and she becomes part of his drastic plan to change his body and change his life. Meanwhile, next door, Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) has spent a lifetime in the Marine Corps and can understand and tolerate no other way of life, which makes life difficult for his son Ricky (Wes Bentley), an aspiring filmmaker and part-time drug dealer who is obsessed with beauty, wherever and whatever it may be. American Beauty was also the screen debut for screenwriter Alan Ball. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Kevin Spacey - Lester Burnham
Annette Bening - Caroline Burnham
Thora Birch - Jane Burnham
Wes Bentley - Ricky Fitts
Mena Suvari - Angela Hayes
Chris Cooper - Colonel Fitts

Sam Mendes' multi-award-winning movie has become a superb DVD, with upwards of six hours of good viewing for anyone who cares to look beyond the movie itself. The bonus materials run almost twice as long as the feature itself, and give a massive amount of value. The movie elicited all kinds of profound analyses from writers who feel most secure when they're showing off how many big words they know -- in fact, it's well crafted and acted, and beautifully shot by Conrad Hall. This is one of the most beautifully transferred movies to show up yet on DVD, and shows signs of having been painstakingly mastered to the most minute specification. There's not a shot here that isn't a delight to the eye, and the audio is its match, a mix of very carefully mastered realistic onscreen sound coupled with a lyrical score by Thomas Newman. The film is broken up into 28 chapters that break the movie up handily, all accessible through a multi-layered menu. The disc offers a choice of DTS or Dolby 5.1 before a single frame has run, and then the menu set-up pops up.
The most rewarding of the special features is the audio commentary track by director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball -- Mendes has a good enough sense of history to acknowledge Sunset Boulevard as part of his inspiration for the film, and he freely acknowledges making major modifications in the content and structure of the movie and the story right up through the final edit. The discussion would be a good jumping-off point for any would-be filmmaker at the high school or college level, and more than a few professionals could learn a thing or two from the director's free-ranging narrative. Alan Ball doesn't do much more than amplify what Mendes is saying most of the time, but his little interjections add enough variety to keep Mendes' remarks from ever even seeming monotonous (which they're not). The 21-minute "American Beauty: Look Closer . . ." incorporates much of the same information contained within the commentary track in a more superficial manner, intercut with remarks by Ball and the various actors. Much more rewarding on its own terms is the hour-long "Storyboard Presentation," in which each sketch is presented with the resulting shot and all are accompanied by Mendes and cinematographer Conrad Hall. In the midst of all of this bonus material, the inclusion of the two trailers seems like an afterthought. The "Cast & Crew" material is an onscreen version of the kind of raw publicity copy that used to go exclusively to editors and feature writers -- it's difficult to imagine too many fans of the movie taking the time to go through it all, especially as it's the only part of the supplement that is awkward to manipulate and the most overtly self-serving in its content. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide