In the past several weeks, I've been wondering if I did the right thing to be favorable towards "American Beauty". Could I have made a mistake? I dunno. Whatever, I'm most certainly not fooled by this abomination. Whether or not American Beauty glorifies pedophilia, this movie seems to justify it. It seems to sympathise with sex offenders, and promote such distasteful subjects as comedy too. And I'm furious. I'd like to put a good stinging welt across Todd Solondz's creepy face for daring to make yet another movie for the purpose of corrupting people's minds and for making yet another movie for the purpose of dumbing down the public's intelligence level too. Oh yeah, he most certainly should go to jail for making such filth. Mr. Solondz, shame on you and all your decendants until the end of time! Get out of town!

Hey Jeff Vice: You say that Happiness suffers from technical dificiencies, but you don't explain what they are. Do you know why? Because there isn't any, and even though you actually liked the way the movie was made, you were personally offended by it, and you had to find something, ANYTHING, bad to say about it. My advice to you: Try to remain professional, please. My advice to everyone else: Watch Happiness. It is incredible.

Anyone who so casually dismisses Happiness as an unwatchable film due to subject matter has been unfortunately blinded in the search to abide by America's puritanical value system. I suggest that what makes Happiness so disturbing is not simply that it "dares to treat the subjects of obscene phone-callers and pedophilia in a surprisingly straightforward manner." but rather that it makes you the viewer *identify* with this characters. To make the "normal" understand and empathize with the "abnormal" is an amazing artistic feat, one worthy of Cannes film festival's Grand Prize. Perhaps Happiness is not a film meant for everyone, but I would suggest that the fault lies not in the film itself but in the viewers insecurity with his own psyche. If the film were not disturbing, then it would not be effective. The message is dark and cynical, specifically, that Happiness is not achievable and those who think it is are deluding themselves. Besides the amazing message and ability to communicate that message, Happiness is a wonderfully written screenplay. It rejects Hollywood conventional writing, by lacking a true protagonist and a true antagonist. We feel sympathy for all the characters and yet we are distant from all the characters. There is unity in the relationships of the characters to each other but there is no true unity of plot, ie there is no one storyline to which every scene attempts to progress. Yet, despite all this, we are still engaged and we are satisfied with the ending (although we may not like it- we feel resolution). The screenplay in itself is pure genius. Second, there is not one weak actor portraying any of Happiness's major characters. This is very uncharacteristic in a film with so many diverse and full parts. I would agree however, that Happiness's major flaw is the rather bland cinematography. However, many major blockbuster's cinematography is more bland masking itself in the excitement of mise-en-scene (aka Armageddon).