medina-claudia57 In my life i have seen many movies about teenagers from Sixteen Candles to High School Musical, and in all the movies i have seen, none have compared to American Teen. American Tenn is the most phenomenal film of the decade. This film truly does define an American Teen. Most films exaggerate or over expose the "Typical Teen" but this film shows a high school life from every angle in a beautifully crafted way. This film changed my life and opened my eyes to another world. The main protagonists are so full of personality and very unique. This film shows you morals and makes you think back to when you made their mistakes, achieved their successes and fell in love like they did. The film is so perfectly edited they filmed every scene as it should have been and glued all the scenes so that it's just a continuous stream of beauty. This film made me cry, laugh, and scared. mainly scared because it made me think about my senior year and if it would end up being that catastrophic, but in the end it gave me hope. I would watch this film when i'm happy, when i'm down, in health and in sickness. The If there is one movie to see it is American Teen.

D_Burke Let me get this grievance out of the way first. I usually talk about what I think about a movie before I rip into how the advertisers screwed up how they marketed the movie. In this case, however, it is important to note what the advertisers did wrong so that I can accurately reflect what the movie did correctly.First, the movie poster has five teens on the cover, each labeled "Prom Queen", "Rebel (Girl)", "Geek", "Jock", and "Heartthrob". Sound familiar? It did to me, and immediately reminded me of "The Breakfast Club". I'm sure other audiences assumed based on this poster that the film was a fictional rehash of the landmark 1985 teen film that, all things considered, doesn't need a remake and is actually timeless to today's standards."American Teen" is a documentary that details the lives of five different seniors in high school (circa 2005-2006) and each of their trials and tribulations. A subject like this probably has been done before in earlier documentaries, but it's always great to see how some things in high school have changed, and some things haven't.Which brings me to my second marketing grievance: the tagline that reads "Remember high school? It's gotten worse." Upon watching the entire documentary, I was waiting for my bad high school memories to pale in comparison to these teens, and they never really did. In different ways, I experienced many the same ups & downs, anxieties, and concerns of these teens. Such feelings were also echoed brilliantly by the brief but clever CGI animations that accompanied these teens dialogues. This sort of tagline, that feels hackneyed and meretricious as it is, almost made me think there was going to be a school shooting in there somewhere.So what did this documentary do right? Well, for one, it separated itself successfully from other high schoolers in its objective portrayal of each of the teens. Director (and writer) Nanette Burstein just lets the cameras roll, and allows the action to take place. Are the teens documented aware of the cameras? Of course, which is why I'm amazed they actually weren't afraid to do some of the things they did on camera. "Prom Queen" Megan Krizmanich (who was actually crowned homecoming queen in the film, another indicator that the marketers didn't actually see the movie) is not a bad person, but she does do some mean things to her peers, most notably when she crank-calls a girlfriend of hers whose drunk, topless picture made its way onto everyone's cell phones. It's amazing she allowed herself to do that on camera."Rebel" Hannah Bailey also jeopardizes her future by skipping so many classes that she comes dangerously close to not graduating that year. Why do these teens feel the need to present this on camera? My guess is that such actions pale in comparison to Paris Hilton's sex tape, for instance.But has high school really gotten worse according to this film? It's certainly different in ways, most notably the increase in technology. Not long ago, when I graduated high school in 2002, no one (and I mean no one, not even teachers) owned cell phones, wireless Internet access was virtually unheard of, and reality TV was designated to MTV and "Survivor". By the next year, all this changed drastically.These advancements in technology certainly changed things. In fact, the incident involving the viral spread of questionable party photos may not have happened as quickly a decade earlier. However, what amazed me was how much hadn't changed in high school. The young men and women in this film still had the same need for love and acceptance that I felt many times in high school. The social circles also haven't changed too much, nor have the desires to have a life beyond high school once it's all over. Those motivations were all evident, and it doesn't matter if any parts of this film were staged or not.By the end of this film, you know and like each of the main five characters by their first name. As of the date of this review, all five of them should be getting ready to graduate college by now, and a followup film would be appropriate for this group of students. However, I hope that the tagline for that film isn't, "Remember the real world? It's gotten worse." You can only wish all these students the best.

Seamus2829 Hats off to the A&E Network for bankrolling this slight, but interesting slice of life at a mid Western high school, where cliques, depression,peer pressure,sexual/chemical experimentation is ever a slice of life (I know, as I went through all of it,myself in my own adolescence). Nanette Burnstein has taken a handful of subjects that we've all seen before (a basketball jock,a band nerd,a mall queen,an artsy introvert,etc.),and show one year in their lives (their senior year in high school)on screen, complete with various interviews of the subjects, all done in a semi cinema verite fore mat (always welcome). The film also features some animated sequences,that manage to crawl into the psyches of some of the subjects (another nice touch). I guess if I have but one tiny quirk about this film, it pretty much manages to only capture one aspect of the American teen experience (as it takes place in the heartland of America,no black,Hispanic or Asian kids are depicted). I'm hoping that if Bernstein decides to produce 'American Teen 2', it will be filmed in an East Coast, urban setting (just to balance things out a little more). Apart from that, I was pretty impressed by it. Parents should see this,to get a view on how their youngsters are conducting themselves when they're not always around (or just don't want to be bothered---until it's too late). I'm talking about teen drinking,smoking,sexual experiences (although,illegal street drugs--i.e. Heroin,Cocaine,Meth,etc.are never mentioned here,but you know they're out there). The film is given a PG-13 rating,due to language & situations mentioned above.

octavalvehandle Any enjoyment I may have experienced watching this film was killed by a nagging doubt that what I was watching was authentic.Is it just me ... or does this film smell fishy? Not only is the camera ALWAYS in the right place when key events occur but each shot has degree of polish that would seem to have required a lot of advanced planning.This feels like some sort of mockumentary and I'm amazed it has been so positively reviewed. Is America this naive? Even if this film is real, it doesn't give us any more insight into the world of teen cliques than we got 25 years ago from John Hughes films. With most documentaries, there is are questions about what liberties were taken for the sake of the presentation but "American Teen" goes beyond that. I'm hoping Nanette Burstein will soon say, "By the way, I hope everyone realizes this was a gag." Otherwise, she has lost all credibility with me.