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Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Synopsis: American Teen is the touching and hilarious Sundance hit that follows the lives of four teenagers - a jock, the popular girl, the artsy girl and the geek – in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first... [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
American Teen is stronger without calamitous characters, whose traumas might’ve overpowered the film, desensitizing the audience and leaving little room for the important nuances of love, conformity, friendship, heartbreak and yearning.
Burstein or an apologist would probably say that in the YouTube era, overt and even manipulative mediation is a fact of teen life, and that her movie is a reflection of that reality. If so...YouTube is better at being YouTube than American Teen is.
Top Critic
There's no denying that Burstein has captured something very real, honest truths about growing up that no one who's been to high-school can deny.
For adults, it's also, possibly, a wake-up call. Do we really put that much pressure on our children? Are we really that insensitive?
An immensely appealing documentary that enables us to empathize with five very different teenagers in their last year of high school in Warsaw, Indiana.
In Nanette Burstein's high school documentary, every kid is either a brain, an athlete, a basket case or a princess. Still, Burstein makes a strong case that there's a lot of truth to those clichés.
Fascinating, queasy-making new documentary. The fascination comes from how unguarded these young people seem to be about their own lives, speaking frankly to the camera and allowing it to observe uncomfortable and intimate moments in their lives.
Top Critic
The kids' mistakes make you cringe -- often with laughs of recognition -- and, during the film's most involving moments, makes you long to comfort them through their trials and cheer on their triumphs.
Top Critic
Burstein does indeed capture some of the awkwardnesses that we can all relate to -- the dating scene, the snubs, the cliques, the bad behavior.
In many ways, Nanette Burstein's approach of editing documentary footage into narrative works better than a lot of scripted teen fiction. The characters are actually complex.
Burstein's camera is right on Mitch's face when he presumably first notices Hannah playing with her band on the school's stage - happy accident? planted idea? editing with hindsight?
For those who felt that the 40 minutes of MTV's True Life were just not enough, your film has arrived.
It's easy for anyone who survived (or is surviving) high school to feel twinges of identification.
A film that will force you to recall every awkward feeling of rejection, alienation, and betrayal that you went through during your own high school years.
Personal as it gets, the film never seems exploitative or sensationalized or the least bit dumbed-down ... or scripted, which distinguishes it from most shows about young people, whether they claim to be real or not.
If American Teen isn't a particularly deep documentary, it is an entertaining one.
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