This movie overall was very interesting. Before watching it, I knew very little about the Amish customs and their beliefs. The movie starts out showing how the Amish live their lives, which are in very simple, small, close knit communities and they all are very strict on religion. The Amish faith believes that they should let their teenagers be able to choose if they want to follow the Amish faith by letting them go free into the "English" world and see what life is like there. Through that Rite-of-Passage, they would hope that the teenagers will then be able to go and choose if they want to live in that type of lifestyle with technology and innovations, or if they want to come back and live a very simple life with no power or any things that would separate you from the family life. What I personally thought was very interesting is the struggle the kids had to go through when they decided on which faith they wanted to follow. Many wanted to live the English lifestyle and have cars, television, and stuff to do, but the thing they struggled with the most is being shunned from their community if they decided to leave and many couldn't live with the thought that if they were to leave, they would lose all of their friends and family in which they grew up with. Overall very interesting theme and story behind the movie. I thought it was a very interesting documentary.

Man, those AMISH really know how to party. Their parents let them go out into the real world and it seemed like every amish kid got really drunk and stuff. It seemed to me like all of them had a ton of brain cells that disappeared as a result of the drugs they did and the drinking they did as well. I thought it was funny how the men had to grow beards instead of wearing a ring. The Amish have a good way of life and the cart and buggy routine works well. They have more time to think about stuff when they are using the cart and buggy. I am sure they will all go to Heaven when they die. I just wonder how much about the Amish we don't know. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye. I want to be amish.

Contains spoilers... This movie cannot really call itself a documentary on the Amish, as the Amish themselves largely decline to be interviewed. One wonders why the film- makers bothered to make this movie, given the lack of cooperation on the part of their alleged subjects. The first few minutes of the "Commentary" feature on DVD sheds some light on this question: the film-makers seem to have been desperate to get something, anything, on HBO, and not until they came up with the tabloid story about an Amish kid who is hooked on crystal meth would they be accepted by HBO. Too bad they had to advertise it as a "glimpse into the lives of the rarely filmed Amish" -- this movie is simply not about the Amish. It does not give any context for the radical transition called "Rumspringa". It does not attempt to discuss how an Amish teen is prepared via their community for Rumspringa or how they perceive the "rite" before, during, or after going through it. The Amish are shown us utterly unreflective, and I can only assume that this is an utterly unfair representation of them. They were not ready to be filmed, for their own reasons, but the film-makers were all too ready to make this film, for their own, rather different reasons.

I've seen this documentary twice now, at least 9 months apart. I think it needs to be seen a couple of times to really take different views within the film. It does leave me worrying about the pre-programming of young minds before they are fully able to disseminate the whole; I say this because of my upbringing in South Africa when the Apartheid regime was in full swing, and the potential 'programming' this could imprint on young minds. A bit of a departure from the Amish nature of the film, I know, but I could'nt help getting the impression from these young folk of the sense of 'helplessness' of their life choices and futures. That apart, a great film to be viewed a couple of times, and equally a super sound track that would be great as a CD release... so how about it folks?