American Teen: Critic Reviews

The players are timelessly familiar in American Teen. But filmmaker Nanette Burstein tells their stories with a distinctly 21st-century pop and audacity that makes this latest version of Fast Times at My So-Called Happy Days High a timely pleasure.

Fascinating, queasy-making new documentary. The fascination comes from how unguarded these young people seem to be about their own lives, speaking frankly to the camera and allowing it to observe uncomfortable and intimate moments in their lives.

This film was for me marred by the persistent suspicion that the director wasn't being entirely straight with us.

Revealing, funny and involving.

What makes Nanette Burstein's movie so powerful is its uncanny sense of familiarity. Watching them, we are transported into a humming, philosophical reverie about ourselves.

Consciously or not, the movie's about the way we structure our lives as drama if we want them to have any meaning at all.

In Nanette Burstein's high school documentary, every kid is either a brain, an athlete, a basket case or a princess. Still, Burstein makes a strong case that there's a lot of truth to those cliches.

They all have their stories tell, some more complicated than others.

American Teen is The Breakfast Club in real time.

The movie does get under your skin, but the way it has been put together reminds me of those animal shows where the crew nudges the gazelles in the direction of the lions with multiple cameras standing by.

American Teen isn't as penetrating or obviously realistic as her On the Ropes, but Burstein (who won best director at Sundance 2008) has achieved an engrossing film.

Burstein may not know when to back off, but she's genuinely curious about all she sees. I bet audiences, particularly young audiences, will respond to this picture.

This being senior year, Burstein can't help but capture some genuine drama, but there's a stage-managed quality to the movie that reminded me of MTV reality shows.

An appealing and unexpectedly moving snapshot of 17-year-olds on the tightrope between family and future.

The look and feel of American Teen is authentically 21st century, but the rites of passage it documents are timeless.

By the end of the film, you'll be firmly on the side of each of these kids, hoping the best for them.

Ms. Burstein has infused her film with an ever-rare authenticity and manages to see beyond each kid's stereotype to the complicated screwed-up adolescent they are (and we were).

Undeniably entertaining for its zippy presentation.

Ultra-slick and predictable.

The whirl of hormones, high hopes and hysterical drama that is high school earns its close-up in American Teen, a smart and revealing look at the Class of 2006 in Warsaw, Indiana.

A moving and engrossing slice-of-life documentary about teen life in small-town Warsaw, Ind.

The doc seems a bit imitative itself, aping the slick manners of its poor cousin on the small screen -- reality TV.

This kind of production is better suited to television than movie theaters. American Teen is a pretty bauble: shiny and alluring from a distance but cheap and plastic when you get close.

Fun and facile in much the same way reality TV is. You may have a good time, but you'll hate yourself in the morning.

Except for some obvious staging on Burstein's part, their ups and downs, doubts and dreams, all feel vividly real. Well, at least more real than anything you see on The Hills.