Mike refuses to believe AMERICAN TEENs always fit the stereotype
At first glance, AMERICAN TEEN seems to be as simple as its title. It's a documentary about average teenagers from a small town in Indiana. A camera crew follows a selection of kids as they go through the trials and tribulations that make up life in High School. According to director Nanette Burstein, the idea is that making a documentary rather would provide "all of the complexities and depth of real people that are often lacking in teen fictional movies." This whet my appetite for the film because, frankly, I'm damn tired of the format of American teen movies and as a Brit I was pretty keen to see how the reality matched the fiction. However, to my utter distress, that reality was steadily chipped away as the 'documentary' slowly declined into a miserably obvious attempt to shove this handpicked selection of teens into the exact same stereotype spouted by Burstein's fiction filmmaker counterparts. As far as I am concerned, this instantly stops it from being a documentary. Using 'real people' doesn't make it true to real life, actors are real people too after all... except Tom Cruise, he's a monkey inhabited by the spirit of a space alien or something. I don't know, I don't get Scientology . But anyway, the point is that just because a director goes along to a school and films the kids there instead of filming specially hired kids to act out scenarios does not make it a documentary. Whether it is because the director actively meddled or the denizens of this particular school played up to their labels, the product is clearly not something that feels true to life. This feeling is compounded by various intrusive devices which turn it from a slice of High School Life into a standard dramatic narrative. Firstly, events are clearly creatively edited: at one point the 'geek' even has air issues as a scene prior to a haircut we see happening is edited into subsequent action to make for a clearer narrative, and the basketball games with the 'jock' are blatant attempts to lie to the viewer - evidenced by inconsistent scorelines on the scoreboard above the court. So if it's not a documentary but also not quite a glossy High School drama, what is AMERICAN TEEN? It pains me to say it, but as far as I can see it's an extended and slightly better crafted example of those fake 'reality TV' shows like BEAUTY AND THE GEEK. A series of staged half-truthes entered into by willing accomplices entranced by the potential of becoming a star. It's not all doom and gloom though. The bulk of my bile towards this movie comes from the fact that the marketing leads us to believe it's a proper documentary i.e. it lies to us. If you can stand these kind of schlock reality TV efforts then you'll enjoy this, because it's certainly a better one. Moments of teen angst are punctuated by quirky animations that offer neat little allegories for their problems (in fact these by far dwarf the rest of the movie in terms of creativity and enjoyment) and the issues faced by the High Schoolers are treated with sufficient care and attention to avoid being portrayed as just 'kid problems' or cheesy melodrama, even if the characters themselves are reduced to classic stereotypes. So overall, if you like High School movies then it's worth a shot. If you like reality TV, you'll enjoy it. If you expect documentaries to reflect reality do not, under any circumstances, watch this film: you'll weep tears of deep sorrow and woe.