It's Warsaw, Indiana and it's the senior year for a group of high school students. Megan Krizmanich is the queen bee and the rich type-A princess. Colin Clemens is the basketball star and closest thing to Jesus. Jake Tusing is the lowly pimply band geek who is intent on getting a girl. Hannah Bailey is the artsy rebel girl with best friend Clark and looking to leave to make movies. She sleeps with boyfriend Joel and they break up. There is a sexting incident and Megan bullies the girl. Colin is under pressure in need of a scholarship.The most obvious question is that if these are even real people. That's a loaded question for a supposed documentary. It seems a lot of it is setup by the filmmaker. It's a little too slick at times. I'm not talking about the animation inserts or the one-on-one interviews. The basic interactions sometimes feel set up. I hope nobody writes dialog for these kids but I wouldn't be surprised if the kids do. The movie does get the awkwardness and uncomfortableness of being a teenager. It just feels like a coat of gloss has been painted on top of any realism.

As of tomorrow at 9:45 p.m., I will no longer be a teenager. It's a great transition, as I enter my adult life. And as such, I have decided to discontinue the star system for rating movies. Applying stars to a movie is highly subjective and discourages readers (and even me) from actually reading reviews. I won't eliminate stars on the first 100 reviews but expect no more. Instead, I will simply recommend or fail to recommend a title. Additionally, I will also begin reviewing videogames. Since I'm very busy with university, work, and my on-campus organization, don't expect too many. Please enjoy my final review written while I was a teenager.I won't be a teenager tomorrow night at this time, so I have less than 24 hours to critique American Teen with complete authenticity. The film is a documentary of sorts about the lives of five teenagers (then high school seniors) as they prepare for college. Director Nanette Burstein shot many hours of footage for this film and carefully chose which should be in the finished product. The result is almost too stylized to be considered a documentary. American Teen lacks the grit of contemporary members of its genre. March of the Penguins was similarly directed, but well edited and brilliantly scored.A guy has pimples while addressing the camera, only to be clear-faced in the next instant. Very strange. That guy, as you may imagine, is the nerdy guy. The other four characters fall into the jock, preppy girl, artistic rebel punk girl, and preppy guy archetypes. They might as well be the cast of the next Ar Tonelico game. All of them are faced with stereotypical problems their social class demands. I was moved, at least, by the characterization each person receives. They aren't just walking drones. The preppy guy begins dating the punk girl at one point and the preppy girl has to overcome her sister's suicide. Young audience members may identify with one of the cast more than most critics would have you believe. Yet despite the inclusion of non-traditional elements, each person adheres to our expectation. People will seldom admit that they are much less complicated than they think. This movie proves it.In my eccentric high school experience, I encountered many people who fit into these categories and additional ones. I won't go into detail, but there wasn't much I could get from this movie that I didn't experience. There is what I consider the film's greatest flaw. As the high school featured is in a small town, only certain types of people are present. My school had approximately 2000 kids at any given time. We had transgendered students, twenty-six different ethnic groups, mentally handicapped students, homosexual students, non-English speaking students, exchange students, and refugee students. A film called American Teen should be from the perspective of members of every group I mentioned and those I didn't see in high school. Religious issues are also absent. A lot of kids struggle with finding their spiritual identity. Why not find someone like that for this movie? A lot of "adults," or people who haven't been in high school for a long time have praised this movie for "showing the real concerns of children." I won't refute the film's ability to do that. If you are one of those people, please remember that the film only addresses a minority of concerns. I didn't dislike the movie, but I felt disappointed while watching it. Here is a documentary that presents us with an aura of its own lack of faith in its ability to be entertaining. People are inherently entertained by learning new things. I don't want a faux Hollywood teen movie with lower production values that isn't as insightful as its bigger counterpart. Heathers or Mean Girls will teach you a lot more about North American teens than this movie will.

High school is a period of life that goes on to shape many of our futures as adults, and whether we share good or bad memories of those years, the magnitude of emotions as a result of changes within our systems, and our social circles, mold themselves onto our very being for the remainder of our lives. Of course, at the time, such moments seem notwithstanding—they feel transitory, and anything but the significant moments in our lives that they eventually reveal themselves to be. Cinema as an art form, has, over its long history of attempting to bridge the gap between such a key demographic and the people behind the camera, made many examples of such a time with varying results. Often the result is tepid; stereotypical characters, with the same-old problems and the same-old resolutions, and that's when there's even a hint of drama entwined within its makeup. That is why American Teen, with its scripted, pseudo-documentary approach to detailing the "gruelling" last high-school year of four teens, feels slightly less stagnant, and more endearing than most. In direct contrast to the normal fare excreted by Hollywood, American Teen is vibrant, layered and tangible; and that's what gives it that extra edge over so many of its peers.While the movie does focus directly on four individuals however, there is something to be said for the fact that much of the feature feels like one central story blemished with a few distracting subplots. This central figure comes in the form of troubled artist, and self-described "in-betweener" by the name of Hannah Bailey (played by herself, as do the remainder of the cast) who longs for a change of scenery away from her conformist, conservative hometown in order to pursue her dream as a film-maker. Taking place over her last year in the state however, we never get to see Hannah's "big" struggle to make her dream happen, but we do get to see the trials and tribulations that she must go through even to make it to the starting line. It's a touching, dynamic story that showcases all elements of high-school life in one very claustrophobic and vivacious persona—as the "in-between" residing within the cracks of high school cliques, Hannah offers the movie it's most compelling and multi-layered character who refuses (mostly) to subdue herself to becoming another classroom cliché.With a movie such as this however, it can often be hard as a viewer to try and decipher where the script ends and real-life characters begin—and this makes it even more impossible to make out where the actors' performances are coming from. Yet taken as they are on face value, American Teen paints a very realistic, often completely believable portrait of teenage life. The characters, while at times a little disagreeable, nevertheless provide the talents on screen with plenty to work with, and it all comes across effortlessly potent. Usually it is the case with such movies featuring a large ensemble of teenage actors that the performances become peg-legs of an already emotionally disabled script, but that is not the case here with a firm, capable cast helping to bring out the greater aspects of the sometimes tawdry screenplay. And while Hannah can certainly be seen as the feature's most compelling character, there exists no real standout to who gives the greater performance here as most give something special to the production that creates a better whole, rather than just a splicing of individual tangents.That being said, there still remains a distinct amount of disjointedness to the movie's story which –because of the nature of high school's divided groups and populaces- renders most of the four characters off-screen while the others tell their own story. As a whole, this polarising approach only draws the obvious weak points of the remaining three characters' tales to the forefront all too often, resulting in an experience that is coherent enough to establish the themes inherent to the script, but not to the point of creating a strong, emotional connection to anyone but Hannah.In the end, American Teen can be taken as exactly what high school represents in our real lives; it's an experience that should definitely be absorbed for what it is, but not taken any further, and used only as a projection for the future. There's a lot to learn, feel and revisit here in the pages of this small, rather unassuming snapshot of teenage life in the grand ol' US of A, but it's certainly not the resounding, all-encapsulating work that it tries to be; a strong, memorable and well-intended effort that for the most part rewards with realism and candid glimpses of such a momentous time we all go through at one point in our lives.A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)

Though not as artificial as MTV pseudo-reality staple "The Hills", this Paramount produced documentary about several teens from Warsaw, IN, eschews verisimilitude in order to create as dramatic a film as possible. Some scenes ring true particularly those featuring the not-raised-on reality TV parents. (All except for the Elvis-impersonator father who clearly loves the attention.) The film consistently gives off an air of artificiality. Several teens date outside of their normal cliques and one can assume this in part has to do with a chance to get some time on camera. As anyone who has sat through "The Bachelor" or the odious "A Shot at Love", amour can be faked for the camera quite easily.And in its artificiality, the film inadvertently allows the viewer to contemplate the veracity of reality television and ask the question of whether or not anyone born in the late 20th century can ever be genuine for the camera. In effect, we're dealing with two barriers to capturing an accurate picture of today's teen, a promise made by the title. Teens are inundated by reality programming. They have internalized the rhythms of the reality show and the behavior of its stars. So its inevitable that teens will be "playing a part" in the drama. As mentioned above, there are several odd romantic choices made by the film's characters, as well, that reveal either a desire for stardom by the teens or meddling by producers/director. Likely a little bit of both. We are not really seeing a documentary about today's teen, but an observation of how teens will act while filmed.With all that understood, the film is entertaining. Director Nanette Burstein has crafted a slick production that plays like an above average teen flick. Even with the cameras on and several unbelievable dramatic contrivances, we do get glimpses of reality. Iconoclast Hannah's conversations with her manic depressive mother and the film's basketball games contain real drama. This is a highly flawed production that is nonetheless entertaining.