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Verdict: It's a beaut.

Details: Starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. Directed by Sam Mendes. Rated R for strong sexuality, nudity, profanity, violence and drug content. 1 hour, 58 minutes.

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Review: I'd readily call "American Beauty" one of the best movies of 1999. It is certainly the best-acted, with Kevin Spacey a standout among a stellar ensemble cast.

As scarily unsettling as it is daringly hilarious, this mordant comedy-drama dissects dysfunctional suburban America with a precision that's astonishing. No wonder writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes — both making their feature debuts — can count Steven Spielberg as one of their biggest admirers.

Mendes (he directed the revival of "Cabaret" on Broadway) and Ball (a sitcom heavy hitter) have fashioned a fin de siecle tragifarce with a Renoir-ish everyone-has-his-reasons subtext. It transforms the picture's surface heartlessness into something far more haunting. For all its bitingly sardonic posing, "American Beauty" is, at its core, a touchingly optimistic film.

The center cannot hold, Yeats wrote. The center not holding in "American Beauty" is Lester Burnham (Spacey). Lester is a 42-year-old burnout case with an ambitious realtor wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), whom he barely recognizes anymore, and a teenage daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), who can barely stand to recognize him.

His reflections on his midlife limbo range from caustic ("See the way the handles on Carolyn's pruning shears match her gardening clogs? That's not accidental") to offhandedly nihilistic ("I've lost something. I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think I always felt this ... sedated.").

Meanwhile, there are the new next-door neighbors. The father (Chris Cooper) is a former Marine who gives his son regular urine tests. The son, Ricky (Wes Bentley), is a philosopher with a videocam who initially comes off as a standard-issue geek but slowly reveals a far more complicated persona.

And then there's Carolyn's rival and object of abject worship: a supersuccessful real estate broker (Peter Gallagher) with a bumper-sticker approach to life.

But our focus is mostly on Lester, a dead man walking who gets his wake-up call during the halftime show at a high school basketball game. Out there on the floor, doing the same ridiculous Bob Fosse cum Michael Jackson routine as his daughter, is Angela (Mena Suvari).

She's Jane's best friend, and she immediately taps into the libidinous core of Lester's paralysis. Her ripe, youthful promise evokes visions of rose petals — as soft and tender and fresh as her firm young thighs. Of course, that's not exactly how Angela sees herself. Smugly satisfied with her newfound power as a nymphet, she takes a more prosaic view, telling Jane that if people who don't even know her want to sleep with her, "it means I really have a shot at being a model."

What happens to these characters, individually and collectively, is somehow startling and unavoidable. Especially Lester, who leaves his boring job, starts smoking reefer with Ricky (they discuss the greater meanings of "Re-Animator") and happily signs up to flip hamburgers at a fast-food place.

"American Beauty" combines the compassion and quirkiness of a James L. Brooks movie ("As Good as It Gets") with the darker charge of David Lynch during his "Blue Velvet" period. There's also a touch of Jonathan Demme's sheer exuberant loopiness circa "Melvin and Howard."

The world is turning upside down for these characters. Some know it; some don't. Some learn it over the course of the movie. Thus "American Beauty" can invite us to enjoy Carolyn's comic obliviousness while simultaneously asking us to embrace Lester's sardonic despair. Or to marvel with Ricky at the mysterious joy of discovering a small white paper bag delicately dancing in the wind.

What we have here is a portrait of America the Beautifully Screwed Up. As Pogo so famously said, we have met the enemy and he is us. But this beauty of a movie goes one step further. We are the enemy. And we are forgiven.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service