By LOU LUMENICK
Rating: 
Posted: 12:08 am
July 25, 2008
THE poster art for Nanette Burstein's "American Teen," which follows five students through their senior year at a high school in Indiana, is modeled after the one for "The Breakfast Club."
So, to a large extent, is this ultra-slick and predictable documentary. It religiously sticks to marketable archetypes, including an acne-scarred male band geek who spends his time playing video games and hoping for a girlfriend, a jock who is feeling the pressure from his dad to be a basketball star so he can score a scholarship, and a handsome hunk who falls for a less popular girl.
The girls are also cast to type: the high-achieving blonde with a guilty secret about a sibling and an artsy brunette with a bipolar mother who dreams of escaping to college in San Francisco despite being told she's not "special" enough.
You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel for these kids, especially when a sexy video of one gets virally circulated all over town.
But at the same time, I was constantly wondering whether Burstein - who collaborated on the even glossier Robert Evans doc "The Kid Stays in the Picture" - was pulling the strings behind the scenes, or at least influencing the outcome by putting the kids on camera.
She emphatically denies this, but the five kids conveniently cross each other's paths.
It's not hard to imagine the filmmaker gloating about her luck when a girl's boyfriend of two years - who apparently didn't want his angst to be documented in "American Teen" - decides to dump her.
Running time: 101 minutes. Rated PG-13 (profanity, sexuality, drinking, smoking). At the Lincoln Square and the Sunshine.
