Movie : American Teen

American Teen
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 1 hr. 35 min.
Starring: Colin Clemens, Hannah Bailey, Megan Krizmanich, Jake Tusing, Mitch Reinholt,
Director: Nanette Burstein
Producer: Christopher Huddleston, Eli Gonda, Jordan Roberts, Nanette Burstein
Distributor: Paramount Vantage
Release Date: July 25, 2008
Writer: Nanette Burstein

Synopsis
AMERICAN TEEN is the touching and hilarious Sundance hit that follows the lives of five teenagers - a jock, a popular girl, a heartthrob, an artsy girl and a geek – in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.

Filming daily for ten months, filmmaker Nanette Burstein (ON THE ROPES, THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE) developed a deep understanding of her subjects. The result is a film that goes beyond the enduring stereotypes of high school to render complex young people trying to find their way into adulthood.

Hannah Bailey is smart and beautiful, but a misfit in her high school. She is a liberal, atheist living in a traditional, Christian, conservative town and dreams of moving to California after graduation. Colin Clemens is the star of the high school basketball team - and in Indiana, basketball is everything. Colin is under enormous pressure this year playing not only to make his town, his school, and his father proud, but for a college scholarship. Jake Tusing is considered to be a nerd in high school. Though quite funny and charming one-on-one, he is painfully shy in group situations and crushed with self-doubt. In his senior year he vows that nothing will stand in the way of him finding a girlfriend. Megan Krizmanich is the student council Vice President and the youngest daughter of a prominent local surgeon, anxiously awaiting word from Notre Dame University admissions. Wealthy, pretty, smart and popular, she rules her high school - just don’t get on her bad side. When Megan’s peers challenge her authority, she can’t help but take action, even if it means risking her future. Mitch Reinholdt is an attractive and charming Varsity basketball jock with a soft side. When he puts his social status on the line, avoiding his popular friends for dates with artsy Hannah Bailey, he strains to maintain his reputation while discovering a new side of himself.

With extraordinary intimacy and a great deal of humor, AMERICAN TEEN captures the pressures of growing up – pressures that come from one’s peers, one’s parents, and not least, oneself.Movie Reviews:

a movie review by: Sean McBride

I do not watch “The Hills” or “Laguna Beach” or any of MTV’s real-life (wink-wink) docu-dramas. It’s not that I think there’s anything particularly wrong with youth culture programming, it’s just that I’m too old to care about a bunch of self-absorbed teenage nitwits. I simply don’t relate to their issues.

So I was a bit surprised by my reaction to “American Teen,” Nanette Burstein’s slick new documentary about a quartet of average kids growing up in Warsaw, Indiana. It’s engrossing to watch these four Senior high school students and their friends preparing to strike out into the real world. More importantly, unlike their MTV and VH1 counterparts, these kids really do seem like average teenagers, which makes it a whole lot easier to relate to what’s going on in their lives.

We meet Megan, the spoiled and mean-spirited school princess who is under enormous pressure by her father to get into Notre Dame. Colin is the nice guy star of the basketball team, and his father is also making life tough by constantly reminding Colin that he has to get a basketball scholarship if he wants to go on to college. Hannah’s mother, on the other hand, is a manic depressive wreck, so Hannah takes on the role of an artsy-outsider as a way to show her dislike for both the school caste system and her family’s Midwestern vanilla values.

And then there’s Jake, a self-described uber band-geek who loves the ladies, although alas, they do not love him back.

Burstein follows these four kids throughout their last year in school, chronicling the best years of their lives, which quite frankly, suck. They fall in love, break up, get in trouble in school and generally suffer through the pitfalls of being a hormone-filled American teenager. It’s all-consuming stuff, particularly when you look at it in extreme close up.

From a wider perspective, “American Teen” rings a bit false at times. Cameras capture Megan at her bitchiest and Hannah suffering through a complete breakdown so severe that she nearly flunks out of school. I get the impression that some of this was over-emphasized so that it would play better on camera. Throw in some dubious re-staging scenes (cameras can’t be everywhere, after all) and I doubt the veracity of “American Teen,” although I won’t deny its emotional appeal.

The bottom line is that after ninety minutes of hormonal histrionics, “American Teen” succeeds by showing us four kids who have plenty of warts, but still manage a happy ending of sorts. It’s inspiring to watch Jake’s resilience, Colin’s ability to rebound from some disappointing performances and Hannah’s determination to get out of her small town and head to California. I’ll take these minor human triumphs any day over watching the manufactured dramas playing on MTV.
Taken From : http://www.celebritywonder.com/