Ah, High School. That largely insignificant four years that provide a lifetime of emotional abuse. It’s funny that the period of our lives that most of us would just as soon forget is so often revisited in film and literature. Why do we have an interest in watching something we all went through? Something we all survived?
And the answer is right there in the question. We all went through it. There are very few things as universally relatable as the High School experience. Very few subjects that provide such clear archetypes. We all know the Jock, the Nerd, the Outcast, the Popular Girl, the Heartthrob. Basically, we’ve all seen The Breakfast Club.
Well this very familiar story is presented to us again with American Teen, the documentary that made a huge splash at Sundance. I was lucky enough to attend an early screening of the film with a very entertaining Q&A with the main characters afterward.
So, is it worthy of the hype? Kind of.
The movie doesn’t tell you a story that you haven’t seen before. It doesn’t shed light on anything new. It doesn’t have the benefit of a great script. It’s just real kids making their way through their senior year. However, it’s that universal relatability that makes it work. Yes, you already know these characters. Yes, you already know this story. But damn it, you can empathize with these kids. You know exactly how they feel. You want to take them aside and assure them that yes, life does get better.
The movie has been compared to a real life Breakfast Club but that’s not a very good example. Sure they deal with high school and have representatives of high school cliques, but Breakfast Club is about the characters overcoming their prejudices and seeing each other as people. It’s about coming together. American Teen doesn’t do that. It’s concerned with each character’s personal story, there are very few instances of overlap between them. It’s not about people coming together, it’s about them growing up and moving on.
Luckily the chosen kids are all interesting and all have stories to tell. Everyone has some goal to accomplish, there are stakes in each of their lives. For Colin the Jock, it’s to get a basketball scholarship so he doesn’t have to join the military. For Megan the Popular Girl it’s to make it into Notre Dame to keep up the family tradition. For Hannah the Outcast, it’s to find the personal strength to make it on her own and move away. For Jake the Nerd it’s to find love. These dreams are all represented in great little animated sequences that are unique to each character.
The filmmaking is pretty solid with a few exceptions. Sometimes the transitions between stories are abrupt and awkward and there are times when we leave characters alone for entirely too long. There are also a few instances when it feels more like you are watching fiction than watching a movie. Like recreations of reality. I don’t know if that is just due to the kids being uncomfortable on camera, just a trick of editing stories to play out in the most entertaining way, or if they actually did recreate or set up some things.
It’s a problem with any documentary. How much can you trust? How much has the truth been manipulated?
Luckily I had the benefit of seeing the real people after the movie and it was enough that I can say that the movie is a very close approximation of the truth, if not the whole truth. But more importantly, it’s entertaining.
So if you want to take another walk down the halls you swore you would never return to, then this is a good way to do it.