.ti nees t'nsah ohw enoyna ot ti dnemmocer I .tol a ti dekil I .eivom doog yllaer a si otnemeM
American Beauty however, was not. I don't care how much anyone says it was the greatest movie ever made, it so was not. There was a message in it that states "look closer, you can find happiness in the little things in life that you don't always see, no matter how screwed up your life is." Great message, so lets think about it in context of this movie. Here's me looking closer.
Had Lester not died at the end of this movie, how would it have gone? Lester finds happiness by giving up on all those around him. All the things in life he has worked for, he tosses out the window. His job, his wife and his daughter will now simply be ignored as Lester goes back and works at a Burger King. So basically, a guy in his forties decides he can't live up to the responsibilities that come with being forty, wants the least bit of responsibility he can muster, and goes back to being a teenage kid working a drive thru and smoking pot with his next door neighbor while fantisicing about banging a high school cheerleader. Those people he is responsible for, his daughter, is about to run away from home, his wife is a neurotic headcase who ALMOST reconsiles with him until she mentions he's about to spill something on the couch, to which he flips out and ruins the whole thing, saying it's just a couch, who cares if I spill something on it. To which I, both times I've seen this movie am thinking to myself, who give a damn, just put the bottle down. But no, Lester becomes so immature, that anyone telling him to do anything makes him go into a whiny rant about how he's fed up with the way his life has turned out. It's great. Find happiness by shirking those who depend on you, and go back to being a spoiled fifteen year old. There's a bright message. The man finds happiness being a deadbeat father and husband, who wants to cheat on his wife with his daughters best friend. Had he not been shot by the repressed gay army guy neighbor, this would've easily ended up on Jerry Springer. In fact, had he not been killed, it's almost a given he would've killed himself. But why Joe, you say, he was so happy? No, he wasn't happy, he was relieved. I could be too. I could just stop paying my bills, stop going to class, drop out of school, blow off people that bug me, flip out at people when they tell me to do something, run a few stop signs, and flip off the world; and I'd probably feel a lot better than I do right now. Until it all catches up to me. Until I come out of this haze and come to my senses. Then I would realize as Lester would've, that I've destroyed any resemblance to a life I had left over some petty mid-life crisis, that could've easily been fixed if I had set the damn beer down, stopped whining, and tried to fix the problems instead of snapping one day over a hard on I had for Mena Suvari (which I think is one of the coolest names I've ever heard) and deciding to piss my life away. But Lester dies in the middle of it all. He never gets to that point, so it's a happy ending. The freaky kid with the eyebrows and the camcorder was almost believable. If anything from this movie made the slightest bit of an impact it would be him. The same kind of impact Finch made in American Pie 2 when he was watering the plant and experienced a tantric moment, saying that the plant and the water and the pouring were all so erotic. It made me think, you know if you really think about a dead pigeon or a bag floating around or watering a plant in a different light, it's kind of interesting. I mean yeah the animal is dead, but there are things living on it now, and it's decomposing. Point made, move on. No wait we aren't moving on. The point of this movie was made when Lester's voice over started and he said by the end of the year he'd be dead. I'm sitting there thinking, oh it's going to be a movie about how great life is and how we should live it to the fullest and appreciate everything. And predictibly it was. It just took around seventeen hours of crap to sift through to find that message. I've seen much better movies, much better done, with much less predictibility. It got best picture. It's important to remember, it didn't get best picture ever. Only as compared to the other junk that came out that year. It was a good movie the second time I saw it. I'll give it "good." Then again so was Jurassic Park 2. Only because I was expecting the crapfest I felt I wasted my time on the first time I saw it, so my expectations were lowered intensely. Only then did I ever say, "Eh, it was alright."
American Beauty however, was not. I don't care how much anyone says it was the greatest movie ever made, it so was not. There was a message in it that states "look closer, you can find happiness in the little things in life that you don't always see, no matter how screwed up your life is." Great message, so lets think about it in context of this movie. Here's me looking closer.
Had Lester not died at the end of this movie, how would it have gone? Lester finds happiness by giving up on all those around him. All the things in life he has worked for, he tosses out the window. His job, his wife and his daughter will now simply be ignored as Lester goes back and works at a Burger King. So basically, a guy in his forties decides he can't live up to the responsibilities that come with being forty, wants the least bit of responsibility he can muster, and goes back to being a teenage kid working a drive thru and smoking pot with his next door neighbor while fantisicing about banging a high school cheerleader. Those people he is responsible for, his daughter, is about to run away from home, his wife is a neurotic headcase who ALMOST reconsiles with him until she mentions he's about to spill something on the couch, to which he flips out and ruins the whole thing, saying it's just a couch, who cares if I spill something on it. To which I, both times I've seen this movie am thinking to myself, who give a damn, just put the bottle down. But no, Lester becomes so immature, that anyone telling him to do anything makes him go into a whiny rant about how he's fed up with the way his life has turned out. It's great. Find happiness by shirking those who depend on you, and go back to being a spoiled fifteen year old. There's a bright message. The man finds happiness being a deadbeat father and husband, who wants to cheat on his wife with his daughters best friend. Had he not been shot by the repressed gay army guy neighbor, this would've easily ended up on Jerry Springer. In fact, had he not been killed, it's almost a given he would've killed himself. But why Joe, you say, he was so happy? No, he wasn't happy, he was relieved. I could be too. I could just stop paying my bills, stop going to class, drop out of school, blow off people that bug me, flip out at people when they tell me to do something, run a few stop signs, and flip off the world; and I'd probably feel a lot better than I do right now. Until it all catches up to me. Until I come out of this haze and come to my senses. Then I would realize as Lester would've, that I've destroyed any resemblance to a life I had left over some petty mid-life crisis, that could've easily been fixed if I had set the damn beer down, stopped whining, and tried to fix the problems instead of snapping one day over a hard on I had for Mena Suvari (which I think is one of the coolest names I've ever heard) and deciding to piss my life away. But Lester dies in the middle of it all. He never gets to that point, so it's a happy ending. The freaky kid with the eyebrows and the camcorder was almost believable. If anything from this movie made the slightest bit of an impact it would be him. The same kind of impact Finch made in American Pie 2 when he was watering the plant and experienced a tantric moment, saying that the plant and the water and the pouring were all so erotic. It made me think, you know if you really think about a dead pigeon or a bag floating around or watering a plant in a different light, it's kind of interesting. I mean yeah the animal is dead, but there are things living on it now, and it's decomposing. Point made, move on. No wait we aren't moving on. The point of this movie was made when Lester's voice over started and he said by the end of the year he'd be dead. I'm sitting there thinking, oh it's going to be a movie about how great life is and how we should live it to the fullest and appreciate everything. And predictibly it was. It just took around seventeen hours of crap to sift through to find that message. I've seen much better movies, much better done, with much less predictibility. It got best picture. It's important to remember, it didn't get best picture ever. Only as compared to the other junk that came out that year. It was a good movie the second time I saw it. I'll give it "good." Then again so was Jurassic Park 2. Only because I was expecting the crapfest I felt I wasted my time on the first time I saw it, so my expectations were lowered intensely. Only then did I ever say, "Eh, it was alright."
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