KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Izzy Adkins The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

medina-claudia57 In my life i have seen many movies about teenagers from Sixteen Candles to High School Musical, and in all the movies i have seen, none have compared to American Teen. American Tenn is the most phenomenal film of the decade. This film truly does define an American Teen. Most films exaggerate or over expose the "Typical Teen" but this film shows a high school life from every angle in a beautifully crafted way. This film changed my life and opened my eyes to another world. The main protagonists are so full of personality and very unique. This film shows you morals and makes you think back to when you made their mistakes, achieved their successes and fell in love like they did. The film is so perfectly edited they filmed every scene as it should have been and glued all the scenes so that it's just a continuous stream of beauty. This film made me cry, laugh, and scared. mainly scared because it made me think about my senior year and if it would end up being that catastrophic, but in the end it gave me hope. I would watch this film when i'm happy, when i'm down, in health and in sickness. The If there is one movie to see it is American Teen.

Brian W. Fairbanks Although I like documentaries, I tend to favor those about historical events or historical figures with film clips and an off-screen narrator rather than those in which a camera follows "real" people around, supposedly capturing events as they occur without benefit of, well, you know, a script. The presence of a camera changes everything, does it not? The presence of a camera is only too obvious in "American Teen," a supposed documentary that I found as believable as any TV "reality show" or your average bestselling memoir.In this film, the subject is a group of Idaho teenagers who are experiencing their final year of high school. The kids themselves are all stereotypes, even if they are "real." There's the popular girl, the jock, the nerd, the misfit, etc. These are all average kids, we're told, but how many average kids would be willing to subject themselves to exposure in a documentary? Of course, I speak as someone who grew up in the days before the Internet and Facebook, both of which seem to have led to an epidemic of narcissism and a complete lack of concern about something as silly as privacy, so maybe I'm out of touch. Still, it's rather apparent that some of the incidents in "American Teen" are staged.The most obvious example of pre-planning is when Megan, the popular girl, gets back at someone for an offense I don't remember, by spray-painting a nasty word and a nastier drawing on his window. She does it even though she's well aware that she's being filmed. Later, while the cameras are still running, she worries about the possibility of getting caught. Of course, she is caught and called on the carpet by the principal, and it's all caught on film."American Teen" is a phony, and proof that, if you really want to tell the truth, do it with fiction.Brian W. Fairbanks

BernardoLima American Teen focuses on a group of students in their senior year at a high school in the little town of Warsaw, Indiana. There is 'The Jock' (Colin Clemens), 'the Geek' (Jake Tusing), 'the Rebel' (Hannah Baile), 'the Princess' (Megan Krizmanich), and 'the Heartthrob' (Mitch Reinholt). This stereotypes fit this kids like a glove, and even if you don't like it, stereotypes exist for a reason, high school has always been like this and will probably keep going on the same so don't expect any big revelations or cathartic moments. This is teenagers acting like teenagers. Sometimes it gets a little too much though, when certain cast members act like they're 11 or 12 instead of 17/18. And also, you have to remember, this documentary was filmed in a small town. I'm not American, but my guess is, in a big city, high school is probably 10 times harder, with more drama, more challenging and even more shallow. Plus, there's a lot of discussion in the boards about the "reality" of this documentary; I don't believe for a second that American Teen is 100% true and I'm sure some of the scenes might have been forced, and chronologically, not everything happen like we saw but, it is still entertaining and a fair portrayal of the lives of teenagers. The documentary does explore a little bit the background of each kid, Colin is fighting for an athletic scholarship to college because otherwise he can't afford it, Megan's behavior may be linked to her sister's suicide two years prior to this documentary, Hanna's mother is revealed to have a maniac depression and Jake tells a past incident that may have shaped who he is now but, as I mentioned before, at the end of the day, this is kids acting like kids. The background information does make it a little easier to relate to some of this individuals but I don't see anyone in their 30's/40's actually enjoying this documentary. American Teen is, in my opinion, aimed at a younger audience, either actual teenagers or people in their 20's who have gone trough some of this stuff, not so long ago.7/10

Jamie Ward High school is a period of life that goes on to shape many of our futures as adults, and whether we share good or bad memories of those years, the magnitude of emotions as a result of changes within our systems, and our social circles, mold themselves onto our very being for the remainder of our lives. Of course, at the time, such moments seem notwithstanding—they feel transitory, and anything but the significant moments in our lives that they eventually reveal themselves to be. Cinema as an art form, has, over its long history of attempting to bridge the gap between such a key demographic and the people behind the camera, made many examples of such a time with varying results. Often the result is tepid; stereotypical characters, with the same-old problems and the same-old resolutions, and that's when there's even a hint of drama entwined within its makeup. That is why American Teen, with its scripted, pseudo-documentary approach to detailing the "gruelling" last high-school year of four teens, feels slightly less stagnant, and more endearing than most. In direct contrast to the normal fare excreted by Hollywood, American Teen is vibrant, layered and tangible; and that's what gives it that extra edge over so many of its peers.While the movie does focus directly on four individuals however, there is something to be said for the fact that much of the feature feels like one central story blemished with a few distracting subplots. This central figure comes in the form of troubled artist, and self-described "in-betweener" by the name of Hannah Bailey (played by herself, as do the remainder of the cast) who longs for a change of scenery away from her conformist, conservative hometown in order to pursue her dream as a film-maker. Taking place over her last year in the state however, we never get to see Hannah's "big" struggle to make her dream happen, but we do get to see the trials and tribulations that she must go through even to make it to the starting line. It's a touching, dynamic story that showcases all elements of high-school life in one very claustrophobic and vivacious persona—as the "in-between" residing within the cracks of high school cliques, Hannah offers the movie it's most compelling and multi-layered character who refuses (mostly) to subdue herself to becoming another classroom cliché.With a movie such as this however, it can often be hard as a viewer to try and decipher where the script ends and real-life characters begin—and this makes it even more impossible to make out where the actors' performances are coming from. Yet taken as they are on face value, American Teen paints a very realistic, often completely believable portrait of teenage life. The characters, while at times a little disagreeable, nevertheless provide the talents on screen with plenty to work with, and it all comes across effortlessly potent. Usually it is the case with such movies featuring a large ensemble of teenage actors that the performances become peg-legs of an already emotionally disabled script, but that is not the case here with a firm, capable cast helping to bring out the greater aspects of the sometimes tawdry screenplay. And while Hannah can certainly be seen as the feature's most compelling character, there exists no real standout to who gives the greater performance here as most give something special to the production that creates a better whole, rather than just a splicing of individual tangents.That being said, there still remains a distinct amount of disjointedness to the movie's story which –because of the nature of high school's divided groups and populaces- renders most of the four characters off-screen while the others tell their own story. As a whole, this polarising approach only draws the obvious weak points of the remaining three characters' tales to the forefront all too often, resulting in an experience that is coherent enough to establish the themes inherent to the script, but not to the point of creating a strong, emotional connection to anyone but Hannah.In the end, American Teen can be taken as exactly what high school represents in our real lives; it's an experience that should definitely be absorbed for what it is, but not taken any further, and used only as a projection for the future. There's a lot to learn, feel and revisit here in the pages of this small, rather unassuming snapshot of teenage life in the grand ol' US of A, but it's certainly not the resounding, all-encapsulating work that it tries to be; a strong, memorable and well-intended effort that for the most part rewards with realism and candid glimpses of such a momentous time we all go through at one point in our lives.A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)