American Teen (2008)

I missed American Teen over the summer but had heard such good things about it, I was pretty excited to catch it on DVD. Unfortunately I found it sort of trite and uninteresting. For a year, documentarian Nanette Burstein followed four high school seniors and their friends in Warsaw, Indiana, each a member of a different 80's teen comedy stereotype. It combines phone conversations, basketball games, parties, interviews and more in an attempt to capture the exalted, un-capturable times of "average" white people in high school.

There's Megan, the bitchy homecoming queen. She's head of the dance committees and incredibly self-absorbed. Her morals seem fairly skewed, and the audience can feel free to hate her for most of the film. Then you find out her family had experienced an awful trauma and wonder if you should have judged so harshly. (Personally I think that's no excuse for being as heartless as she comes off in the film, though I understand editing could have made her seem worse.) Also she has problems because oh no her entire family attended Notre Dame and so she has to go to Notre Dame because god forbid she disappoint her parents and think for herself! Plus, this means she has to get good grades and like, study.

There's Colin, the school's biggest basketball star. His dad has totally pressured him into being a one-minded athlete so that he can get into school on a basketball scholarship. He doesn't really do much besides practice, go to games, and worry about scouts. I don't remember much else about his story really, except that everyone thought he was nice. And he ruined some games because he was nervous.

There's Jake, the band geek who spends most of his time playing video games and wishing he had a girlfriend. He manages to woo a pretty freshman bandmate, who doesn't yet realize he is a "loser", but they don't have much in common, and he is sort of off-putting, and she is sort of a bitch, so it doesn't work out. He dreams of being a studly hero like Link, and hopes to find more acceptance in college. Watch his adventures of finding a prom date! (Why he wanted to go to prom, considering his general lack of friends and apparent distaste for large social interactions, I cannot comprehend.) Also there's a very teen-movie-moment when his older brother gets him way drunk at a crazy bar.

There's Heather, the unstable artist who wishes for nothing more than to go to California and make movies. She lives with her grandma (her mother suffers from mental problems and her dad lives somewhere else- I forget what was up with him, sorry). She has a variety of interests and passions: playing in a band and taking photographs and painting and doing wacky things. She lives in fear of inheriting bipolar disorder. She has a lot of setbacks (mainly, she is mistreated by two jerky boyfriends) but manages to push forward through all of the bullshit, graduate, and move on to bigger and better things (presumably). It seems she's really the film's heroine, being the most interesting and idiosyncratic.

Throughout American Teen are interspersed several animated montages, which I think were meant to serve as innovative and more interesting storytelling devices. I found them out of place and overly-dramatic. The editing itself didn't always fit well together, either. I was often very confused about how much time had passed or even what season they were in. Having fairly recently been through senior year myself, I found it frustrating that I couldn't always relate my own experiences to theirs since it was chopped up so weirdly. Also one guy suddenly tried to become a main character halfway through the film (he's the "hunky" one), and that irked me. He was uninteresting and an asshole, and I didn't understand why I was suddenly supposed to care as much about him as the other main four.

Well overall this movie was just sort of... boring? I didn't really care about any of the kids except for Heather, but she's only 1/4 of the narrative. I understand what the filmmakers were trying to do: Break down high school stereotypes! Show the world that no one truly fits into their pre-assigned boxes! Rah! And that's admirable, but I didn't feel it was necessary. That whole thing's been done numerous times. Admittedly, since I went to an all-girl's private school, I didn't really observe many of these "cliques" that allegedly show up in public high schools, so maybe this sort of message still is very apt? I can't say. It's an admirable goal to promote individuality and warn against being judgmental, sure, but I just didn't find this film to be particularly special. I hope Megan, Colin, Jake, and Heather are doing well these days but that's about as far as my interest extends.

3/5