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.