American Teen

Nanette Burstein's documentary American Teen serves up a portrait of white-bread middle America as it follows four Warsaw, IN high school students through their senior year. Colin is a strong-jawed basketball star and all-around nice guy. Megan, a rich and pretty blonde with a catty streak, is the class princess. Jake is a self-described band geek devoted to video games, yet also determined to find a girlfriend. Hannah is a rebel with artistic inclinations who wants desperately to go to California to become a filmmaker but finds her graduation threatened when she has a meltdown after breaking up with her boyfriend (Hannah rallies, however, when she's romanced by another basketball player). As Burstein follows her subjects throughout the school year, the dramatic turns seem so perfectly timed, the presence of the crew at crucial moments so felicitous, and the youngsters themselves so remarkably articulate in describing their feelings that American Teen sometimes feels not exactly off-the-cuff. While that charge may be entirely unfair, the sense of artificiality here is exacerbated by animation used to reflect the kids' inner lives, as well as a carefully selected set of pop songs to italicize big moments. Hardly a probing look at the problems faced by contemporary high school kids, American Teen is nevertheless entertaining and should be welcomed by YA audiences. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include 19 minutes of clips from “Hannah Blogs,” six deleted scenes (17 min.), “Pop Quiz: Cast Interviews” (4 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for an engaging doc.] (F. Swietek)