Susan Granger’s review of “American Teen” (Paramount Vantage)
Documentary filmmaker Nanette Burstein spent 10 months following five high-school seniors in the small Indiana town of Warsaw, plotting and planning a new look at the teenage movie genre, using real kids and focusing on their conflicts about feeling judged, not fitting in and not being good enough. While her naturalistic approach is admirable, the results are, nevertheless, stereotypical, featuring the popular girl, the jock, the artist and the geek.
Pretty Megan Krizmanich is the pampered teen princess whose superiority masks a guilty secret about a sibling. Colin Clemens knows that if he doesn’t win a college basketball scholarship he’ll end up in the Army. Heartthrob Mitch Reinholt is a Varsity basketball jock who puts his social status on the line to date artsy Hannah Bailey, who yearns to break away from this Christian, conservative community move to San Francisco but is terrified that she may have inherited her mother’s bipolar disorder. And nerdy, lonely Jake Tusing’s yearning for a girl-friend is cursed by his self-doubt and plague of acne.
There’s a timeless quality and universality about the emotional immaturity of the high school experience but these young people seem to be able to analyze themselves and articulate their pressures, while animation sequences illustrate each student’s hopes and fears. Filmmaker Nanette Burstein was co-director, with Brett Morgan, of the Oscar-nominated documentary “On the Ropes,” about three young boxers, and “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” adapted from the book by Hollywood producer Robert Evans.
Aimed specifically at an adolescent PG-13 audience, “American Teen” is a predictably slick 6, capturing a feeling of authenticity despite some obvious staging. You can see Burstein’s initial interviews with the four students she chose on the movie’s Facebook site, and an epilogue tells what they’re doing today.
