Film

High school deserves a more sympathetic documentarian than Frederick Wiseman, but American Teen appears to have proceeded from the assumption that real life is exactly like The Breakfast Club. The kids selected for our contemplation—Megan the Queen Bee, Colin the Basketball Star, Jake the Video Gamer, Hannah the Iconoclast, etc.—seem to exist in a world without homework, SATs, attentive teachers, inquisitive parents or indeed, anything that might distinguish this movie from a focus-grouped reality-TV show called American Teen. The narrative arcs are familiar from movies and sitcoms—how badly does Megan’s father want her to get into Notre Dame? Will Colin secure a basketball scholarship? Can Hannah ditch small-town Indiana for San Francisco?—supplemented with a giggly progression of hookups, breakups and spin the bottle.

Was being a teenager really this simple—or camera friendly? If nothing else, Burstein shows that high school has become a crueler place since the popularization of text messaging. She also captures the poignancy of teen awkwardness; viewers of a certain personality type will suffer shudders of recognition at Jake’s refusal to dance at the semiformal. Still, the presence of a film crew may have encouraged drama. At one point, the movie watches Megan vandalize a classmate’s house; when she’s punished by the school, her father tells her it was a stupid thing to do, and even stupider if she couldn’t do it “and not get caught.” Come to think of it, that’s exactly what Emilio Estevez’s father said to him.