The Movie
Teenagers are often looked upon with derision, and that's a fact which boggles my mind. Every teenager wants to be taken seriously and treated with respect, but then when those same teenagers grow up, they're cranky adults who look down upon the next generation. Of course, those are wild generalizations, but one's teenage years are full of wild generalizations. I just don't understand why each generation scorns the new herd.
I'm willing to admit, though, that there aren't many great high school movies. For every witty/snarky Heathers or Election, we've got at least a couple of vapid/annoying Napoleon Dynamites. (The less said about the High School Musical franchise the better.) Nanette Burstein's documentary American Teen tries to transcend those labels, and tries to delve deep into the high school experience to show us that those teens so many regard with condescension can transcend labels as well.
It doesn't work. Now, I feel I should get this off my chest before we go any further: I don't like The Breakfast Club. Never have, never will. And that is perhaps one of the things which prevented me from enjoying American Teen, as it clearly tries to position itself as the non-fiction equivalent (hell, its poster was a direct homage). It takes five high school seniors from Warsaw, Indiana, who don't know each other very well, and traces their separate paths.
"Rebel" Hannah Bailey is by far the most interesting of them. She longs to be freed from the confines of small town life, and is a positive artistic force; she paints, takes pictures, shoots movies, and plays guitar, all with great joy. But early in the film, her boyfriend of several years breaks up with her after they sleep together, and what it does to her is heartbreaking. She is mentally immobilized, refusing to go to school and incapable of enjoying life. The most wrenching scene in the movie is when Hannah's dad takes her to school after she learns that she's two absences away from expulsion. Her dad, who does not live with her and who drove all the way to Warsaw just to take her to school, isn't able to convince her to get out of the car. She cries and sobs and promises that she'll make it tomorrow. He holds it together well, but you can see the anguish this is causing him.
On the other end of the spectrum is "princess" Megan Krizmanich, the mean-spirited diva who will do whatever she has to do to remain the most popular girl in school. This includes vandalizing a fellow classmate's house and sending nude photos of another girl to what seems like every member of the student body. She's like Hilary Faye, Mandy Moore's crazed queen bee in the underrated teen flick Saved!, only terrifyingly real. She's in closer orbit to "heartthrob" Mitch Reinholt than Hannah is, and friends with him enough to be perplexed when he starts dating Hannah. Mitch is kind of like the friendly male alternative to Megan, but in the end just as shallow.
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