American Beauty

Tales From the Rec Room

Well, after last week’s miserable slog through Family Guy, we’ve come to a nice palate cleanser with… oh, American Beauty? Okay. Well, our old pal Mynt showed up to discuss American Beauty, a movie that was considered such a masterpiece in 1999 that it cleaned up at the Oscars and, less than two decades later became almost universally regarded as a joke, mostly because of the you-know-who of it all, but also because of the argument that it was no longer as edgy, profound or as ground-breaking as we once thought. But upon further reflection it’s still… pretty good? Do people get the criticism of this movie wrong? Do we really think the movie is on Lester’s side, or does it agree that he’s a reckless, misogynistic loser who projects his issues onto everyone? How does this movie reflect the immediate post-Cold War, peak-Lewinski sexual politics of the era? Why did none of these young actors have bigger careers? How did Mynt miss a very young John Cho in this movie? How has the show managed to go off on tangents about Aaron Sorkin two weeks in a row and yet has still never covered The West Wing? Anyway, stick around for the ultimate “hear us out” episode of this season.