I don’t get it….The critics that are hating on “American Teen”, the new documentary by Nanette Burstein, are really hating on it. Then there are those that are eating it up. I’m the latter.
“American Teen” is the closest representation of my high school experience I have seen on film. Sure I like the Hughes movies, but most films about teenagers we see today are far too over the top, usually driven purely by sex, and overall just fail to connect with me. It was refreshing to see this in an age where MTV constantly attempts to pass off shows about people our age trying to make it in life as “reality”. There were no coaches waking the kids up every morning to follow a producer approved agenda of their day. Many critics claim that many scenes are contrived or staged, I disagree. Do I think there are scenes in the film that were a bit “enhanced”, definitley, but if people like Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore can make a career off of docs that are almost completely “enhanced”, I’ll let a few scenes slide. I feel this succeeded more story wise than most docs do because of it’s particularly well arranged narrative. I do believe Burstein took some liberties with the continuity of scenes, in some cases having moments from earlier in the year play later in the film to enforce a point, but it was only a benefit to the story. Burstein knew the point she was trying to make with “American Teen” and arranged it too suit, and yes, I ate it up.
The Next To Last Mohican 