I was pulling for American Teen
to succeed before I began to watch it. The film’s purported
goal—to provide an authentic vision of contemporary teenage life
in America, sans all of the drama of, say, Thirteen—is
rather admirable. That said, ten minutes in, the exercise has
already become self-defeating. Filmmaker Nanette Burstein may
very well have entered the project with the aforementioned noble
intention, but the movie she has completed doesn’t reflect such.
This is an MTV-styled celebration of all of the irrelevant
lunacy of teenage life, not an introspective look at the
complexities of the period. Burstein feels like a fifteen year
old assembling the action, not only relying on selective editing
and a cheesy structure like an amateur filmmaker of the age
would, but also thoroughly engaging her four central characters.
American Teen would like to think it will send a message
of comfort to its teenage viewers; instead, it will likely make
them pray they don’t come off as idiotically as most of the
movie’s subjects do on a day-to-day basis.
Most of the
problems of American Teen stem from the fact that at
least two of its subjects aren’t at all accurate representations
of demographics in the teenage population. The result is a
picture that often feels like it’s trying to be clever rather
than meditating on the various pains, pleasures, and pressures
associated with an age.
Burstein
mistakenly would like us to think that subject Jake Tusing is a
standard “geek” because he has acne and plays video-games, but I
don’t think I encountered anyone at all similar to him in my
years in high school. Jake is distinguishable for the fact that
he’s desperate to have a girlfriend, rampaging around the
hallways of local Warsaw Community High trying to hook up
(almost randomly as Burstein would like us to think) with girls.
Of course, the movie always depicts Jake in a misunderstood
light, never really forcing the audience to think critically
about the girls he does beg into submission. One is years
younger than him—he’s a senior and, as I recall, she’s a
freshman—and one he refuses to dance with at a school function
she is nice enough to accompany him to. Sure, Burstein might try
to make the case that she wanted to form an unbiased view of her
characters to counter-argue my point, but what she actually does
is far from such. Bustein clearly tries to make the audience
feel bad for Jake and, as such, depicts him as yet another
“helpless geek” of cinema, one of cartoonish, Revenge of the
Nerds-proportions.
Burstein’s
other “favorite” subject—and ironically the one that she
marginalizes the most—is Hannah Bailey, the token “artsy rebel”
of the picture. Hannah doesn’t have many friends herself, but
she tries to connect with others who are interested in the Arts
and who don’t follow Warsaw’s traditional conservative mold. She
ends up falling for Mitch Reinholt, a popular guy who is thought
to be out of her league, only to find out that he likes her too.
The results are particularly disastrous when the relationship
falls to a typical teenage crumble, causing Hannah to go into
meltdown mode. This ultimately boosts her desire to leave Warsaw
for San Francisco, an idea that Burstein glamorizes to no end.
Possibly because she identifies with Hannah’s abstract
sensibilities, Burstein indulges the girl, depicting Hannah to
an irrationally angelic extent even when she is acting like a
downright brat (especially during the film’s third act). The
movie is often recklessly sympathetic with its subjects all for
the sake of crafting captivating situations, resulting in a
picture that feels reckless and irresponsible. (In Hannah’s
case, Burstein turns what may be a case of clinical depression
into the typical misfit sob-story.)
In order to
go full-circle and cover every conventional clique, Burstein
must of course also turn her cameras to Colin Clemens, “the
jock,” and Megan Krizmanich, “the prep.” Ironically, these two
are the most interesting characters in the movie, and yet they
are trivialized because they are the most normal. Colin plays
basketball and needs a scholarship to pay for college because
his father can’t afford to pay for it (he works as an Elvis
impersonator). Burstein’s dramatic tactics pay off rather well
in this story-thread; the weight of each missed basket Colin
makes in front of college-recruiters is felt with agony as the
audience witnesses highlights from his games. Nonetheless,
because he represents her token meathead, Burstein often doesn’t
allow Colin’s considerable intelligence to come through.
Thankfully, however, she doesn’t treat Colin as a bad guy
because he’s popular, as she does with Megan. While Megan may
not be a saint—she engages in an abundance of standard teenage
tomfoolery, in one scene toilet-papering a rival student council
member’s house and spray-painting a penis onto his window (with
temporary window paint, mind you)—she doesn’t deserve to be
demonized in the way Burstein allows her to be. Megan, really,
is more typical in behavior and personality than any of her
counterparts, subjected to Bustein’s angst for no real reason
other than to fit a desired caricature.
Ultimately
American Teen does exactly the opposite of what it should.
In order to achieve its goals, the movie needed to break down
the traditional stereotypes of high school; instead, filmmaker
Burstein does nothing but enforce them. If Jake really
represents the standard geek in all of his arrogance and
cluelessness, then geeks everywhere deserve to be mocked. If
Hannah really represents the standard artsy rebel in all of her
bitching and moaning and inconsequential thinking, then artsy
rebels everywhere deserve to be cast out from the rest of the
high school crowd. If Colin really represents the standard jock
in all of his focused energy towards basketball, then jocks
everywhere really are tools. And if Megan really represents the
standard prep in all of her selectively-edited
mean-spiritedness, then preps everywhere really are demonic. But
the truth of the matter is that Jake and Hannah are not normal
high-schoolers and Colin and Megan are manipulated into fitting
the mold of exaggerated stereotypes. If American Teen
were effective in depicting the average teenager and thereby
comforting its average teenage viewer, then it would show how
similar standard members of every high-school clique are. What
Burstein shows her audience, especially in Jake and Hannah, is a
version of high school that is disquieting only because it is
nothing like high school. American Teen may be
moderately entertaining for its manipulative dramatic
values—much in the same way that typical MTV-programming is—but
it certainly comes up short in fulfilling a thoughtful thesis.
While it never quite reaches crass territory, Burstein’s film
doesn’t begin to achieve any level of authenticity, either.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 7.28.2008
Screened on: 7.22.2008 at the
UltraStar Del Mar Highlands 8 in Del Mar, CA.