What to make of American Teen?  I saw the movie about a month ago, so I’ve had plenty of time to contemplate it.  Ostensibly, it’s a documentary following the lives of 5 teenagers during their senior year.  Each teenager has been carefully selected to fill a pre-determined slot of the typical high school caste system.  There’s Jake (the geek), Hannah (the indie chick), Colin (the jock) and Megan (the popular/mean girl).  The cast of this documentary is so pre-selected that there is an actual poster for the film that mirrors the poster for The Breakfast Club, with each of the cast posing as the role of their corresponding character from that iconic film.

But the problem is, this topic has been mined so many times through various MTV reality shows (The Hills, True Life, Made, My Sweet Sixteen, et al.) that it’s difficult to determine just what is “real.”  Granted this movie isn’t near as melodramatic as The Hills (I show that I hate with the white-hot heat of 1,000 suns) and, therefore, seems more plausible.  However, the longer one reflects on the film, the more questions arise.  When the camera crew follows some of the “cast” as they vandalize a rival’s house, does that make them culpable?  What about when someone forwards a naked picture of a (presumably) underage girl?  Or when there’s underage drinking?  Where’s the line between “documenting” and “aiding and abetting?”  We’ve been so bombarded with the “teens behaving badly” genre of reality television, that things as “run-of-the-mill” as vandalism or underage drinking can almost feel quaint.  But they’re still against the law, and it makes one wonder just exactly where the filmmakers would draw the line.

But that’s not to say that the movie doesn’t engage the viewer.  There are some funny and touching moments.  And the profiled teens are interesting.  I’m just not so sure if this movie is what it claims to be.  At times, the movie feels like an entire montage of “This Season On American Teen”.  As it tries to compress an entire senior year of five people who travel in social circles that, by and large, don’t intersect, it can start to feel like an extended trailer.  We see glimpses of things that seem more like teasers about upcoming story lines than it does an actual story line itself.  The movie is like a rock that skips across the water of senior year.

The movie tries to position itself as the antidote to shows like The Hills.  But the greater the distance between the movie and me, the more it feels like a toned down version.  Or, more accurately, it feels like a version that’s been deliberately toned down in order to appear more “real.”  Things happen that just feel staged.  Like Hannah (the indie chick) dating one of the jocks on the basketball team or discovering in the third act that Megan (the poplar/mean girl) has a reason for her rage or the jock getting an important piece of advice just before the big game.  It’s all just a little too tidy. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being The Breakfast Club and 1 being The Hills, American Teen gets a 6.