Mel Brooks, undoubtedly one of the most influential comedic voices of his generation and of all time, has left behind an incredible legacy over his near century long life and even at the ripe old age of 97 (as of writing) he’s still capable of making us all laugh.  Under the mentorship of Sid Caesar, Mel found his way through Hollywood as a successful joke writer before eventually deciding to expand into film.  His debut, The Producers (1968) was a smash hit, and earned the multi-talented comedian his one and only Oscar for Original Screenplay.  What particularly made The Producers stand out was that it bravely tackled a taboo subject, namely the horrific legacy of Adolf Hitler in a post-WWII world.  After the horrors of the Holocaust came to light at the end of the war, many people believed that it was in bad taste to make any jokes about the atrocities committed during the war, including any mention of Hitler himself.  Mel Brooks felt differently, seeing ridicule as the best answer against evil in the world.  He believed that by mocking Hitler and the Nazi regime through his comedy, he was robbing them of their power to inspire others that want to emulate them.  Mel knew very well that Fascism and xenophobia didn’t go away with the defeat of the Nazi regime during the war, and that the specter of Hitler still haunted humanity for many years afterwards.  That’s why his ability to mercilessly mock the imagery of Hitler and the Third Reich in The Producers was such a profound breath of fresh air when it premiered.  But Mel would continue to look to other targets for ridicule in many of his future films, including a place that rang a little too close to home in Hollywood.

The year 1974 was the zenith of Mel Brooks’ career as a filmmaker.  In that year, he released not one but two comedy masterpieces, both of which remain just as potent and hilarious as they were when they first released.  In the Fall of 1974, Mel produced and directed the classic horror spoof Young Frankenstein (1974), which was a farcical delight that at the same time was also reverential to the movies it was spoofing.  While most of the movie still holds up as a comedy, it’s also clear that Mel’s working in more of his comedy comfort zone with Frankenstein.  The other film, released in the early part of 1974, was a much more risky project for Mel, and one that fifty years later remains the most controversial film of his career.  But surprisingly enough, Blazing Saddles  (1974) didn’t start out as a Mel Brooks project, but was instead the brainchild of writer Andrew Bergman.  Bergman’s premise of a sleepy Western town that’s forced to change once they receive a new sheriff who’s Black instantly appealed to Mel Brooks, who saw the comedy potential in the material.  He worked with Bergman to flesh out the comedy even more, insisting to Bergman to write without being “polite.”  And touching up the comedy even further, Mel enlisted the help of one of the hottest stand up comedians of that time, the legendary Richard Pryor, who was also instrumental in shaping the racial commentary of the film.  But even with all of the comedy legends working together on this movie, the film was certainly going to be a hard sell.  Because of the no holds barred nature of the racial comedy, with shall we say very liberal use of a certain racial slur, the script was certainly going to face some roadblocks on the way to getting made.  Eventually it found a home at Warner Brothers, and Mel was granted access to one of the most legendary Western movie backlots in Hollywood to bring to life his silly little film.  In the shadow of Western sets that the likes of John Wayne, Errol Flynn, and Randolph Scott all shot their movies on, Mel Brooks would stage iconic comedic moments like a horse getting punched out by football star Alex Karras, the stunned silent arrival of Sheriff Bart to town, and the climatic brawl that spans the entire studio lot.

What makes the comedy so special in Blazing Saddles is the complete and full sincerity of the cast.  Each and every performer fully embodies the absurdist reality of this farcical spin that Mel Brooks has put on the Western genre.  The most instrumental casting of course is that of Sheriff Bart himself.  Though there was speculation that Richard Pryor himself would step into the role having contributed to the screenplay, Mel was insistent on getting an actor without a comedy background to play the part, as Bart needed to be a grounded character compared to the caricatures of the  rest of the cast.  He found his Sheriff Bart in Broadway actor Cleavon Little, who perfectly slipped into the role.  The crucial part of the character of Sheriff Bart is his confidence; he has to be the smartest person in amongst of whole slew of buffoons, and Cleavon plays that aspect to perfection.  His escape from a tense situation at his arrival is brilliantly realized as he uses the townspeople’s blind bigotry against them, leading to a satisfactory punchline where he says to himself, “Baby, you are so talented, and they are so… dumb.”  It’s a great summation of his character and Little’s subtle performance aids in making Sheriff Bart work as the heart of the movie.  He’s also perfectly matched with Gene Wilder as the Waco Kid.  Wilder, who previously work with Mel on The Producers, was not the original choice for the part, as veteran actor Gig Young had originally been cast.  However, Young’s drinking problem made him a liability on set, so Mel had to make the choice to let him go and re-cast the part.  It took a while for Mel to find the right actor to play the Waco Kid; he even attempted to enlist John Wayne himself at one point, who graciously declined due to the more objectionable aspects of the script.  Gene Wilder was reluctant to take the part, think that the part was too restricting for him as a performer, as he referred more bombastic comedy roles.  Eventually Wilder relented on the condition that Mel chose Gene’s script as his next project and that’s what led to the making of Young Frankenstein.  Despite Wilder’s misgivings, he was perfect for the part and some of the movie’s biggest laughs come directly from him.  Rounding out the cast, there are tons of comedy legends including Harvey Korman as the villainous Hedley Lamarr, Madeline Kahn as the vivacious Lilly Von Shtupp (who received an Oscar nomination for her role), Slim Pickens as the dim witted cowboy Taggart, and Mel Brooks himself playing the distracted Governor LePetomane.

Initially, Warner Brothers executives were hesitant in releasing the movie, as the subject matter and unvarnished language made this a very taboo project.  Upon the first screening, the executives were stunned silent by the uncomfortably frank way that Mel Brooks addressed racial issues within the film.  It was thought that the movie would either get shelved or dumped quietly into theaters in order to bury it as the studio had little faith in it’s success.  In the time in which this movie was made, racial tensions in America were still fairly raw.  The Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s had been a tough fought battle for equality and it eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which broke down the Jim Crow segregationist policies of the South.  But even a decade later, racial tensions endured, especially as they were inflamed again by political opportunists like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.  There were certainly more opportunities growing for black  voices in entertainment at the time, as subgenres like Blaxploitation began to emerge, but Hollywood itself was slow to progress with the times.  What was particularly pointed in the subtext of Mel’s film was how the Western genre was itself complicit in creating this myth about America’s past; specifically putting an almost exclusively white face on it.  There were numerous stories of the old west that centered around African American cowboys and lawmen, but none of them were being told.  Sure, Mel Brook’s was approaching this subject in a humorous way, but the critique of Hollywood’s lack of diversity was certainly there as well.  Warner Brothers knew very well that this was going to be a controversial movie no matter what.  What ultimately led to the film making it to theaters was an internal screening with Warner Brothers staff, much of whom were better representative of what the typical movie going audience would be like, and they were hooting and hollering with laughter the whole way through.  Thus, Mel Brooks got his film out into theaters and of course it would go on to become an instant classic.

Looking back on the movie as it now approaches it’s 50 year mark, it is remarkable how well the film holds up.  A lot of the comedy, particularly the more slapstick gags still feel timeless.  A group of cowboys eating beans and blowing gas around a campfire definitely feels evergreen, especially with the hilariously over the top sound effects used.  But, the time that has passed with regard to the racial subjects in the movie put the movie in a different light today than it did then.  Race relations are somewhat different today than they were 50 years ago, though there is still a lot about the movie that feels sadly relevant as well.  Black representation on film has improved over time, both in front and behind the camera.  There are still some lagging factors when it comes to equality though.  Just because milestones like electing the first Black president have happened in the recent years doesn’t mean that racial tensions are gone forever.  Some would say that they are getting fired up again.  This is one aspect where Blazing Saddles is especially relevant to this day.  In the film, Hedley Lamarr appoints Bart the sheriff of Rock Ridge knowing full well that the bigoted townspeople would rather abandon the town rather than accept him as their new protector, and that will help him gain control of the land for his own aspirations.  A disingenuous politician stirring up racial tensions for his own gain feels all too familiar in today’s political climate.  There certainly are aspects of Mel Brook’s comedy that have not aged as well either.  Mel certainly is an equal opportunity offender in his many comedies, but there are times when some of the racial jokes fall into the point of gratuitousness.  Also if there was something that I think he would rethink in the film, it would be the depiction of the musical performers in the “French Mistake” number as reductive gay stereotypes.  It’s all still in good fun, and it’s clear that Mel’s intent is to poke holes in the absurdity of racial bigotry and not to indulge in the ugliness of it.  However, over time, some people have lost that context when it comes to celebrating the comedy of Blazing Saddles over the years.

One of the things that has been said a lot about Blazing Saddles is that it’s a movie that could never be made today.  There’s a lot of truth to that, as the making of the movie was very much a response to the racial politics of the time in which it was made.  But, for some, they use Blazing Saddles as an example of how Hollywood has lost it’s way.  There are many critics online who point to this film to say that movies have gotten too “politically correct” or Hollywood has gotten too “woke.”  It’s interesting that they would single out Blazing Saddles of all movies as being the film that represents a time in Hollywood that wasn’t “woke” as it’s a movie that honestly is one of the most socially conscious films ever made by a major studio.  It was “woke” before that ever became a term.  Mel Brooks is and has always been an outspoken defender of civil rights movements in America.  Even in his late 90’s, he still speaks his mind on these issues.  One of the last social media posts made by his late friend and fellow comedy legend Carl Reiner before his death in 2020 was pictures of Carl and Mel at the latter’s then 94th birthday party, with both of them proudly wearing shirts that said “Black Lives Matter.”  Being called “woke” would be a compliment to Mel and not an insult.  But, for some reason, the anti-woke crowd wants to claim Blazing Saddles as a movie that speaks for them.  You have to wonder, what is it exactly about the movie that they like?  It certainly can’t be the criticism of naked racism, as Mel Brooks is clearly making fun of the complicit nature of white bigotry that pervades the Western genre.  I shudder to think that the only reason some people like this movie is because of it’s un-censored use of a certain word.

Here’s the thing about the way the movie uses racial slurs in the film.  Never in the whole movie is a racial slur meant to be a punchline for laughter.  Sure there are situations in which the n-word is skirted around in a hilarious way, like the old prospector character Gabby Johnson getting drowned out by a church bell right as he says the word or when Governor LePetomane asks Hedly Lamarr, “What are you nuts?  Can’t you see that that man is a Ni?”  But when the actual word is spoken, it’s not taken as a joke, but is instead intend to be a shocking jolt.  It also is important to note that the word is said by some of the dumbest and most ignorant characters in the movie.  They are the subjects of ridicule in the movie first and foremost, and that’s the intent of the story Mel is trying to tell.  Stories of the American West have long glamorized the image of white Americans taming the old west, while whitewashing all of the racial injustices that happened along the way.  Primarily it was the slaughtering of Native American tribes that got left out of the myths of the Old West, as indigenous people were reduced to savage obstacles in the way of progress, but also at the same time settlers of other races, including Blacks and Asians, were also left out of the Western myths too.  Blazing Saddles breaks down that myth by making it clear to the people of Rock Ridge that bigotry is their own worst enemy and that using a slur is just a sign of their own stupidity and blindness.  If there are people out there who find the n-word usage to be the one funny thing from this movie, and that it’s the thing that they lament as not being able to be done today, well, they are telling a lot about themselves then; and also making Mel Brooks’ point for him.  As the Waco Kid succinctly says in the movie, “These are people of the land.  The common clay of the new West.  You know… morons.”

That’s why it’s a good thing that a movie like Blazing Saddles couldn’t and shouldn’t be made today.  Blazing Saddles is a comedy that needed to exist in it’s own specific time; a time where naked bigorty needed to be called out and that Hollywood had to be confronted over it’s own shameful history in perpetuating the stereotypes that fan the flames of racism.  It’s a movie that should stand on it’s own and speak across generations.  The reason why a movie like it shouldn’t be made today is because I don’t think anyone would be able to offer the same thing that Mel Brook’s added that made the difference; a feeling of hope.  Today, comedies are far more cynical and geared toward the irreverent, because the belief is that positivity is a gateway to sappiness.  What is important in Blazing Saddles is that in defiance of all the bigotry he faces, Sheriff Bart fulfills his duty as a protector of his town and ends up saving the day in the end.  Even more than that, he does so by using his intelligence to win the day, not just outsmarting his enemies but also winning them over to his side.  The movie is hopeful about overcoming prejudice, even though it’s still aware about the long arduous road that is, with Sheriff Bart at one point saying, “Someday, they’ll even address me in broad daylight” when talking about the townsfolk he just saved.  There are many people who have tried to emulate what Mel Brooks has done with movies like Blazing Saddles, but few capture the same amount of wit and intelligence that his movies contain.  There is a very nuanced and pointed commentary about race in America amidst all of the fart sounds and sex jokes.  That’s what makes Blazing Saddles such a special comedy; it truly hits so many levels when it comes to comedy, with a sharp satirical edge and a fair amount of broad slapstick for good measure.  And it never fails to make us laugh, even after 50 years.

There’s one thing that is interesting about the growing list of Oscar winners over it’s 96 year history.  That thing is how each year’s selection of winner becomes a bit of a time capsule of their era in film.  Of course there are some winners that do remain timeless and feel just as fresh and entertaining today as they were when they first premiered in theaters, such as Casablanca (1943), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), or both The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974).  But then there are some winners that don’t quite translate as well over the years as the tastes of movie audiences change.  For some of them, historical context is necessary towards understanding why this particular film rose to the top of the Oscar field.  Some are just due to studio politics, such as the dated and cliché The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) beating out the timeless High Noon (1952).  But other times a winner is just the product of it’s era and just doesn’t translate well over time.  It doesn’t always mean that the movie is bad, but it is clear that some movies age poorly.  By all accounts How Green Was My Valley (1941) is a charming little family drama, but the only thing we seem to know about it today is that it’s the movie that beat Citizen Kane (1941) for Best Picture.  For their time, honoring these kinds of movies would’ve made sense, because they reflected the mood of Academy voter, who have more than not favored the more uplifting film.  But, there are times when you see the Academy choose a winner that feels like a breakthrough film at the time which unfortunately over the years begins to look more and more like an out of touch exercise with hindsight.  And I don’t think that I have ever seen a Best Picture winner fall of the pedestal harder than the 1999 champion American Beauty.   25 years ago, American Beauty looked like it was going to be the herald for a new era in cinema.  Nowadays, it comes across as naïve and pandering, and even more surprisingly, almost completely forgotten.

I remember the way that Hollywood fawned over this film when it first came out.  This was going to be the movie that shaped a new era in Hollywood with it’s tackling of then taboo subjects of suburban malaise, teenage sexuality, and homophobia.  It also had a high pedigree of talent behind it.  With the backing of Hollywood rising star Dreamworks and it’s trio of super producers Katzenberg, Geffen and Spielberg, this movie was design from the get go to dazzle the Academy.  West End stage director Sam Mendes was called upon to make his big screen debut after dazzling the theater world with his acclaimed re-imagining of Cabaret for both London and Broadway.  Veteran cinematographer Conrad Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) was hired to shoot the picture and Thomas Newman was given the duties of scoring the film, and in each case they were breaking the mold of a Hollywood prestige picture.  Then there was the cast, which included established stars like Kevin Spacey and Annette Benning as well as young newcomers like Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, and Mena Suvari.  And it was all centered around a screenplay from longtime sitcom writer Alan Ball that Spielberg was said to have fallen in love with immediately.  Overall, this was a movie that came together with all the right ingredients at the right time, which is the case with most movies that end up collecting multiple awards.  But for it’s time, this movie was believed to be something else entirely.  Understanding the context of it’s release, American Beauty was coming out at the tail end of the 1990’s, which at that time had seen high budget period dramas dominate at the Oscars, including Braveheart (1995), The English Patient (1996), and Titanic (1997).  The year prior, the very safe pick of Shakespeare in Love (1998) had upset Saving Private Ryan (1998), so the Academy was beginning to be criticized for being out of touch, which may have been what prompted the turn that benefitted American Beauty in the eyes of Academy voters.  And boy did it, as it not only took home Best Picture, but it was one Best Actress award short of completing the Oscar Hat Trick, which is winning the top five awards (Screenplay, Actor, Actress, Director, Picture), a feat only three films have ever achieved (1934’s It Happened One Night, 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs).

So what was it about the film that cast this spell on the Academy.  The movie looks at the lives of two suburban families going through various crises.  The Burnhams are a nuclear American family on the verge of implosion after years of sexual frustration on the part of the depressed patriarch Lester (Kevin Spacey).  Living next door are the Fitts family, which is lorded over by a disciplinarian and homophobic father named Frank (Chris Cooper) who clashes constantly with his artistically inclined son Ricky (Wes Bentley).  Both in many ways represented the ideals of the nuclear American family that so many in conservative media like to push forward, and this movie takes a sledgehammer to that image and exposes all the cracks underneath.  Lester is depressed by his lack of urgency over his life, and then is “awoken” after being aroused by his daughter’s “sexy” best friend.  From that moment, he disrupts all of the routines that have governed his life and begins to do things his way, much to the chagrin of his career driven wife (Annette Benning), whose got her own subversive issues going on.  And of course the kids are going through their own hormonal awakening throughout the movie.  And then there is the Colonel, whose external homophobia we learn is a mask for his own self-hatred.  It’s in general a critique of the societal masks that we impose on ourselves to function in a modern society, and the movie examines if those masks themselves are part of the problem we face everyday.  After a long line of safe, studio driven fare, I can see how the Academy believed that American Beauty was this subversive gem that would start a new era of filmmaking in Hollywood.  In some ways it kind of did, but not in a way that would put American Beauty as the touchstone film that they thought it would be.  In general, 1999 was a year full of movies that would shake up Hollywood, and some have held up much better over time than American Beauty did like Fight Club (1999), The Matrix (1999), Magnolia (1999) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).  Those films continue to inspire filmmakers to this day, but I can’t think of any other movie that strived to be the next American Beauty.

So, why is it that 25 years later American Beauty has fallen off people’s radar despite being such a big winner at the Oscars.  It’s been out of print as a physical media release for nearly a decade now, and you’d have to dig pretty deep to find it on streaming (currently it’s on Paramount+ along with most Dreamworks catalog titles).  I think the primary reason that people no longer talk about this movie these days is pretty obvious, so I’ll just get to the elephant in the room.  The depiction of Lester Burnham in the movie seems to diminish the pedophiliac nature of his character.  He is the main protagonist of the story (the whole thing is framed through his post-death narration) so we are observing the movie through his perspective.  And Lester’s main motivation is that he wants to have sex with an underage girl.  25 years later this element of the character cannot in any way be justified.  Now truth be told, he doesn’t go through with it, but the movie does comes as close to the edge as it can with the subject matter and at the same time, this sexual drive is seen as a positive thing for his character development because it’s what pulls Lester out of his mid-life funk and let’s him feel alive again.  The implications of that are just icky in today’s culture, especially in a #MeToo world.  But if it was just the character development in the movie, maybe you could just dismiss it as out of touch for it’s time.  Unfortunately, we have learned of Kevin Spacey’s real life sex crimes, and it make the character of Lester Burnham almost unbearable to watch now.  Unlike Lester, we know Spacey actually went through with his molestation of underage victims, by his own admission.  It’s a disgraceful revelation that in many ways has clouded the reputation of American Beauty more than anything else.  With things hitting pretty close to real life, I wonder if Alan Ball has any regrets in letting his main character be let off the hook for almost committing statutory rape.  I get that exposing the cracks underneath polite American society was the aim, but some things need to be called out as unacceptable and this movie just seemed to forget that.

Before the exposure of Kevin Spacey as a perverted monster, American Beauty faced another backlash over the years since it’s release, and that was the perception that it was a pretentious movie.  American Beauty rides that fine line between the naturalistic and heightened sense of reality.  While the movie is grounded in a contemporary (for it’s time) American setting, the film also takes several turns into flights of fantasy, mainly as a way of looking into the minds of the characters.  We especially see this with the moments that Lester lusts after the character Angela (Mena Suvari), with deep red roses being a heavy metaphoric presence.  Sure, those moments are beautifully shot by the late Conrad Hall, but in the end they are more style over substance given how heavy handed these moments are.  Still, those are the moments that helped to sell the movie and remain the most memorable to this day, so that’s a credit to the craft of the movie.  Where most of the pretention lies is with the dialogue found in Alan Ball’s script.  Originally, American Beauty was originally conceived as a stage play, and that helps to make the heightened dialogue feel more within context.  The characters in this movie do not talk like real human beings, but more like they are characters within a play whom the actors must imbue with heightened emotions.  For the most part, the lines that are supposed to be profound just become annoyingly cloy.  This is especially true with the character of Ricky, whose artistic sensibilities come across as particularly hollow.  The notorious trash bag scene over time has become the poster child moment of this movie’s pretentious reputation.  What was supposed to sound deep and poetic in it’s day now in today’s eyes just looks like a privileged white boy’s low effort attempt at filmmaking.  There are stronger moments in the movie that do still work, like the escalating tension of the dinner scene where Lester throws the plate of asparagus at the wall, but for the most part you can tell a lot of this script would’ve hit a bit harder if performed on a stage, instead of being awkwardly translated for the screen.

There is one thing about the movie that I do think has subtly worked it’s way through the culture at large since it’s premiere.  The character of Lester Burnham in many ways started the trend of “difficult men” on both the small and little screen in the 20 years since it’s release.  This is particularly the case on television, where you see characters like Tony Soprano and Walter White emerge in pop culture in the 2000’s and beyond.  While Lester Burnham was not the first of these kinds of characters (a main protagonist that is interesting to dissect while at the same time hard to sympathize), he certainly helped to popularize the type.  As problematic as Lester is, his character evolution is in itself an interesting catalyst in examining the subversive fractures of American society, particularly when it comes to masculinity.  You see many more characters of this kind post-American Beauty than before, which in the 80’s and 90’s leading up to it kind of presented a more idealized portrayal of the modern American male.  Lester Burnham was a deeply flawed individual, but that ascension of his own worst instincts bubbling to the surface made him a far more interesting character as a result, and it changed the perception of what constituted a portrayal of masculinity in movies thereafter.  But, at the same time, the movie does have it’s own dated portrayals of masculine/feminine dynamic that haven’t aged very well either.  What is surprising is that Alan Ball, who is a queer writer himself, seems to perpetuate the antiquated idea of deep in the closet resentment being the driving force behind homophobia.  We learn that Colonel Fitts’ virulent homophobia is it’s own mask for his own closeted feelings, but this feels like a story element that minimalizes the horrific nature of violence towards the gay community.  Yes, there are cases where homophobes have been exposed as having secret gay affairs, but for the most part violence committed against the gay community has just been the result of pure bigotry.  To pin internalized homophobia around Colonel Fitts’ motivations is a very reductive approach to a very serious problem that still affects the queer community in American society today.  I feel that with hindsight, this is a part of Alan Ball’s script that likely would be much more nuanced today.

The movie primarily has the problem of just being too tied in with it’s era.  It is a very Clinton-era movie, made back in a time when the worst that this country was going through was the scandalous thought of an American president being unfaithful to his wife.  In some ways, I kind of see what may have inspired this movie to begin with.  American Beauty definitely feels like a cry out into the dark abyss of modern American malaise.  It was a post-Cold War world where we as a society were growing comfortable with the idea of being the world’s sole super power.  American Beauty was very much a wake up call to remind us Americans that society is not as candy colored as it seems.  America is a complex society of many divisions, and trying to mask over that with an unrealistic picture of polite, suburban values is doing more harm than good.  Now, the delivery of that message in American Beauty is undermined by it’s own pretentions, but the underlying idea behind it is still sound.  One thing that I think unravels the movie as a whole from achieving it’s goal is the way that it handles the ending.  Spoiler Warning, but the movie closes with the murder of Lester Burnham.  The death has been telegraphed throughout the movie, as Lester is speaking in narration beyond the grave (an inspiration from the classic Sunset Boulevard).  What I think would have made the movie much more of a masterpiece is if it left the identity of the murderer ambiguous.  We see fully who pulled the trigger on Lester (Colonel Fitts) and it kind of robs the movie of it’s most profound moment.  There are several culprits who may have wanted Lester dead by the end, and the mystery it left behind would’ve been a great thing to leave the audience with.  This moment would’ve felt even more poignant years after, because in the context of the movie, Lester’s murder is the catalyst for destroying any remaining perception of the perfect American idealized world left in the lives of these characters.  Honestly, there’s a story to be told about what happened to all these characters afterward, because just like the families in the movie, America itself was on the verge of it’s own traumatic upheaval.  American Beauty was the first Best Picture winner of the new millennium, and in the 25 years since America has seen the 9/11 attacks, decades of war, economic upheaval, a rise in Fascism, and a crippling pandemic.  American Beauty warns us of how we grow too complacent sometimes, and the years since have only reinforced how much we take for granted with our own comfort.

American Beauty unfortunately is undermined with it’s own dated sense of values from the time it was first written and filmed.  The world has changed considerably in the last 25 years, and a pretentious examination of suburban malaise just doesn’t have the sting that it used to.  The fall from grace that Kevin Spacey has gone through hasn’t helped either.  Still, there are many things about American Beauty that still hold up very well.  One is Annette Benning’s incredible performance as Carolyn Burnham.  Her career obsessed matriarch driven to the extreme to uphold her place in society is still a potent character portrayal.  The scene where she has an emotional breakdown after having a terrible Open House showing for her clients, with the backlighting of the closed blinds perfectly captured by Conrad Hall’s camera, is a definite highlight of the movie.  And unlike Spacey, her career is still in top form as Ms. Benning has just been nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars again for the movie Nyad (2023); he fifth overall.  Sam Mendes, who is only one of three directors to ever win for a debut film, has only gotten better in the last 25 years as a filmmaker.  His follow-up to American Beauty was in my opinion his masterpiece with the amazing Road to Perdition (2002), and he’s made many other astonishing films such as Skyfall (2012) and 1917 (2019) since then.  Conrad Hall would sadly deliver his swan song with Road to Perdition as he passed away before it’s release, and he won a posthumous Oscar for his work.  Both that and American Beauty represented a fantastic late career resurgence for one of the master cameramen of Hollywood.  And Alan Ball’s sensationalized style of writing would find a better place back on television with hit shows like Six Feet Under and True Blood.  For the movie American Beauty, it remains a film today that’s both infuriating for it’s pretentiousness but admirable for it’s artistry.  Given the crazy quarter century that’s we’ve been through, I honestly think it would be interested to revisit this kind of story.  Perhaps Alan Ball and Sam Mendes should consider a stage version like it was originally was supposed to be, but with a more contemporary context, especially when addressing Lester Burnham’s problematic underage lust.  It is fascinating how in 25 years, this movie went from the peak of Hollywood glory to a cinematic footnote.  It’s both deserving of scorn, but also much more interesting than that.  At the very least, it’s worthy of a re-watch.  Times change, but cinema is forever, and this may be a plastic bag caught in the wind of a movie, but that in a way is it’s own beautiful little time capsule.

Looking at the state of film criticism in our social media driven world, I feel like there has developed a disconnect over what people actually think a film critique really is.  In the last few years, film discourse has very much opened up to allow more voices into the conversation, with social media amplifying opinions across the spectrum.  This democratization of film criticism, which has allowed fans and casual viewers to have a voice that reflects back towards Hollywood, has certainly helped to change things for the good in the industry.  Instead of having the trades and large media conglomerates dominate the discourse around film, groups that otherwise never had a voice before with regards to media are able to deliver their own takes about Hollywood that break through the wall of insider talk.  Minority groups can voice their criticism about representation in various forms of media, and their critiques can now lead to a new re-examination on Hollywood’s part in order to rectify that disparity.  But, there is a downside to the increased input of the casual film criticism out there in the media, and it has had it’s own negative effect on not just the media, but the culture as well.   Part of the problem is that we’ve reduced film criticism down to a mathematical formula, which itself is a reductive action done to what should be a personal experience.  And it’s a problem that Hollywood has only themselves to blame, because they have put too much stock into scoring their outputs in a way that is more friendly to their data driven work flow.  While it may help to cover their bottom line by getting quantifiable numbers to base their actions on, it also belittles the art of filmmaking itself as everything becomes standardized.

Of course, the current media trend that I am talking about is a thing called Critic’s scores.  These are accumulated numbers based on published film reviews that are put together to create an average percentage that quantifies a movie’s overall score.  There are numerous sites that offer this kind of ranking, but the most well known of these is a site called Rottentomatoes.com.  Rottentomatoes.com was started in 1998 by a group of undergraduates from the University of California, Berkeley.  The site was simply a statistics site that used movie reviews as the catalyst.  Interest in the site grew over time, and they eventually were bought by larger media conglomerates; first IGN in 2004, then to Flixster in 2010, and then finally by movie ticket retailer Fandango in 2016, who have been running it ever since.  Rotten Tomatoes gained their notoriety through their distinguishable ratings system, which much like a school grading system offered up a pass or fail metric to base a movie’s reception on; only by their branding based on tomatoes, movies either fell into fresh or rotten categories.  Anything above 60%, and the movie would be fresh.  Anything below that, and it would be rotten.  A few years in, once Rotten Tomatoes gained more notoriety, they began to give movies a certified fresh ranking, meaning that the movie statistically could never fall out of fresh territory based on the ratio of the number of reviews and their aggregate score.  With certification like this, Rotten Tomatoes scores became marks of quality for films, and film companies began to use their Tomatoes score as part of their marketing.  If Rotten Tomatoes deems it fresh, then you will hear of it.  Other sites like IMDb and Metacritic also have developed their own ratings systems that in some way or another grab the attention of movie executives.

While seeing how well a movie performs on Rotten Tomatoes can be informative, the statistical aspect of their ratings system can also be misleading.  Film criticisms are often multifaceted and nuanced, and it can’t just be summed up in binary fresh or rotten ranking.  Sometimes, critics find themselves in the middle, neither loving nor hating a movie, but find the good and the bad in movies that are often hard to fully sum up.  Sometimes, critics even change their mind about a film after a sitting on it for a while, giving it a re-consideration after a second or third viewing.  But that kind of nuance is just not acceptable in a business that requires immediate feedback.  While Hollywood is able to get a quantifiable score out of places like Rotten Tomatoes, they are also getting a snapshot of that movie’s response.  And sometimes, that can actually have a negative effect on itself.  Something of that order happened happened to Disney with two of their films this last summer.  Disney decided to gamble big on the releases of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) and Pixar’s Elemental (2023) by having them premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.  The reception from the festival was tepid to say the least, and it resulted in both of the films sitting with Rotten scores on RT.com for almost a month before their wide releases based on the few, high brow reviewers who saw it at Cannes.  This had a negative effect on both film’s box office, as they performed well below their expected openings.  But, over time, Dial of Destiny and Elemental did pull themselves out of the Rotten territory and ultimately ended up fresh at 70% and 76% respectively, with Elemental even earning a very late Certified badge.  The movies’ overall response in the end turned positive, but the damage had already been done by those low numbers and both movies struggled at the box office.

We are at a point where audiences are very well aware of the Fresh vs. Rotten metric, and it’s affecting their choices in what movies they go out to see.  This is largely due to the fact that movie tickets today are quite expensive and the customer is very discerning about what they want to spend their money on.  The Rotten Tomatoes score has become a powerful metric within the film business because it’s an easy to understand rating that all audience can look towards.  Much like all consumer ratings out there, people just want to look at the score and determine if it’s worth it to them to invest in it.  This is nothing new for film criticism.  For most people, when they look at a movie review, they don’t want to waste time reading through the critic’s every well thought out analysis; they just want to see the score.  That score of course varies from critic to critic.  Critics either use a letter grade, or a star rating, or in my case on this blog a number grade.  Some critics even just uses a simple binary rating system in the positive or negative.  It’s all based on how the critic wishes to quantify their overall response in a simple way to sum it up for the reader.  This of course is what fuels the scores of sites like Rotten Tomatoes, which takes those scores and creates an aggregate number.  But there is a flaw in the way this score is put together.  Quantifying a review in many ways is subjective.  There are plenty of film critics out there who don’t even give a score.  How does Rotten Tomatoes take their critiques into account.  At this point, we see where the binary system becomes a bit flawed, as a review that sounds negative in certain areas and positive in others without giving out a score messes with the algorithm of the site’s metric.  As a result, a guess is made as to where the movie falls, and that can have an effect on the overall score of a movie.  This of course becomes even more of an issue because these are numbers that matter a lot right now to Hollywood and has an influence on how they market a film as well as how what they greenlight in the first place.

Published film critics’ scores being aggregated into a number is one thing that becomes a problem when that number doesn’t reflect nuance.  It’s also another thing when there is also a user rating in play.  Rotten Tomatoes and other sites do offer a secondary number based on input from their own users, which on it’s own is a worthwhile service that allows the casual user to have a say as well.  The unfortunate thing about user ratings is how open they sometimes are, which can sometimes lead to abuses of the ranking system.  There is this practice that has arisen on places like Rotten Tomatoes called “review bombing,” which is where a coordinated effort is made to load a bunch of negative reviews all at once onto a websites user rating in order to purposely drive the overall score down.  Most often, this is done with the purpose of damaging the public perception of a movie, which the organized group can point to as proof of their own slanted opinion.  You definitely see the effect of this with movies that have very polarized critics’ and users’ scores on Rotten Tomatoes, such as Captain Marvel (2019), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) and The Little Mermaid (2023).  What makes review-bombing a suspicious activity is that it usually happens before a movie comes out, as most of the user reviews seem to have been purposely negative without even having the context of seeing the movie.  As observed, the most often reason for these review bombs happen is because a group is attacking a film for it’s content rather than artistic merit, such as if it is focuses on a marginalized group or contains a message that they object to.  The intent of the review bombing is to get Hollywood’s attention and make them believe that these often small minority opinions are much bigger than they really are and try to force the industry to conform to their own narrow-minded worldview.  It may be dishonest, but it has had an effect before.  I would argue that Lucasfilm took the review bombing of The Last Jedi too seriously and it caused them to do too much over-correction which resulted in the mess that was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).  Rotten Tomatoes even recognized the damaging effects of these trolling review bombs and they changed their metric to only reflect certified user reviews.  Sadly, we are in a place where valid criticism and baseless trolling get mixed together, and it unfortunately becomes even harder to allow genuine non-professional voices into the mix without having to gatekeep free speech.

So, how do we look at fair film criticism in this kind of environment where opinions are too often hard to take seriously.  I try to look at what I value in film criticism.  When I was developing into a burgeoning cinephile in my formative years, I took the opinions of film critics seriously.  My childhood overlapped with the rise of film criticism as entertainment, as part of my weekly routine was to watch Siskel & Ebert’s syndicated review show on TV.  Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert may have unfortunately also contributed to the reductive binary rating metric that place like Rotten Tomatoes emulate; famously popularizing the thumbs up or thumbs down rating on their show.  Truth be told, that’s what made their show a draw for me as a young film lover, as I eagerly wanted to see which way the thumbs would fall for each movie on their show.  But having gone back to look at some of their old reviews on YouTube, another thing occurred to me about what they brought to their show; something that I probably didn’t rightfully appreciate as a teenager.  Their reviews were simply not just about the binary thumbs rating; it was about how they expressed their thoughts about the movie.  That was the key to their success as film critics.  They could articulate why a movie was good or bad.  That’s the art of criticism that you just can’t put into a numeric score.  Film criticism is about engaging with a work of art, and stating what effect it had on you.  That’s what makes being a film critic worthwhile; it’s a art form within itself inspired by the response that we have to any type of media.  Some can deliver a succinct opinion within a strongly worded paragraph while others can spin a thesis’ worth of thoughts across multiple pages, and any one of these criticisms can be just as valid whether positive or negative because it is genuinely coming from an honest place.  It’s that kind of personal touch that in more and more ways is getting buried down in the discourse of film criticism as movie ratings are becoming more of an impersonal metric.

As it has become increasingly clear over time, the perceptions of Hollywood’s highs and lows are becoming increasingly manipulated into becoming part of larger narratives about culture and the arts.  People want to draw their own conclusions about Hollywood and they use simplified metrics like those found on review sites like Rotten Tomatoes to define their narrative.  People attacking Hollywood for going “woke” for instance cite user ratings from Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb as proof of Hollywood being out of touch with the audience, though as I stated before those ratings can be heavily manipulated.  At the same time, certified ratings can also be skewed in favor of a positive response for a movie.  Sony Pictures got caught red handed with having a fake film reviewer submit positive reviews of their movies, and this may have juiced the numbers for some of their films on these ratings sites.  As we’ve seen, systems that can be easily manipulated should not have this kind of influence over an industry, and yet they are increasingly getting the notice of Hollywood who desperately want to use that Fresh rating in their marketing.  Those abusing the privilege of contributing to a film’s overall ranking are doing so with the intent of manipulating Hollywood, and that could lead to some dangerous consequences, like the silencing of disenfranchised groups who don’t have the same obsessive drive as internet trolls to hijack the narrative.  In the end, though site like Rotten Tomatoes have an immediate impact on a movie, it at the same time is not a long term one.  You’d be surprised how many movies receive a Rotten rating on RT.com and then years later develop into cult classics.  I can think of a dozen movies even in the last year which I think were rated too low or too high for my opinion.  A movie I liked, Shazam: Fury of the Gods (2023), received a rotten 53% from critics, which shows that I fell outside the majority consensus on that movie.  But at the same time, it doesn’t motivate me to change my opinion either.  Those critics ratings on Rotten Tomatoes or any other site are not a monolith, and if you disagree with the overall ratings, that’s fine.  Movies are a subjective art and we should all like what we like and not feel pressured to accept the “narrative.”

And while I do point out a lot of the flaws of the Rotten Tomato critical metric, there are some positive things that the site has done for movies in general that are worth celebrating.  The site does spotlight movies that otherwise would’ve gone unseen and it does function as a genuine entertainment new site, though one that is imbedded with the industry itself.  The same goes for IMDb, which is an invaluable resource for film information of all kinds.  People just need to look beyond the surface level of those Fresh or Rotten ratings and they’ll see the added worth of the sites they visit.  That’s something that is true about all film criticism in general.  Don’t just skip ahead to the final rating; read through and engage with the opinion that the film critic presented to you.  You may not agree with it, nor should you be obligated to, but taking into consideration the arguments made by a critic will allow you the view to have more nuanced reactions of your own.  When visiting Rotten Tomatoes, look through the blurbs of each critics reviews; you’ll find that sometimes there’s a caveat to a positive review or a silver lining to a negative one.  Maybe use those blurbs to seek a link to the original review itself if you are compelled to read more.  Some movies generate some very clear cut, one-sided opinions, but you’ll find a lot of other movies that often leave people conflicted.  One thing that I do like about the Certified Fresh label given to movies on Rotten Tomatoes is that they are often almost always won by small movies that normally would go unseen by mass audiences.  If the Rotten Tomatoes metric carries that much weight in the industry, it’s best that movies that should be spotlighted are the ones that receive the best responses with critics, and they are able to float to the top thanks to Rotten Tomatoes Certified label.  That’s ultimately what we want as film critics, to help get something that meant a lot to us seen that otherwise would be ignored.  We use our voices to articulate the love we have for film, and some of us do so in writing.  That’s why I created this blog site.  You may not agree with every opinion I have to say here, but I tell you that every word I write is my own and I am happy that it inspires any engagement from any of you, even if it’s in conflict with my opinion.  While Rotten Tomatoes and other sites like it are valuable as an aggregate collector of film critiques, just know that movies are more than just Fresh or Rotten; they are experiences that defy being just a number.