American Beauty 1

I thought it was dull and laden down with stereotypes and clichés.  It was well produced and featured great acting but the overall effect was a long quiet scream of cynicism about middle class life.  Ya, ya, ya the American dream is a hollow sham and we all live lives of quiet desparation, or so Hollywood has been telling me for the last 40 years.  Everyone has their moments of doubt and even depression, but if we were all as moribund as the characters in this film and I mean every single character, there would be piles of dead suburbanites strewn around vats of purple kool-aid every weekend. 

Now don't get me started on The English Patient.