'American Teen' examines high school life -- without the usual song and dance

James Sanford By James Sanford
on October 23, 2008 at 7:14 PM, updated October 24, 2008 at 5:13 PM
Hannah battles depression and finds an unexpected love interest in AMERICAN TEEN, a documentary about high school life in rural Indiana.

In HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR, the students at East High will breeze through a senior year in which no one deals with sexual urges, the temptations of drugs and alcohol or any other sort of crisis that can't be solved through song. Most of us didn't spend high school dancing down the hallways and belting out ballads, though. Neither do the young people in director Nanette Burstein's sometimes touching documentary AMERICAN TEEN, a film that, despite a few miscalculated forays into fantasy, seems a lot more "real" than any recent season of MTV's "The Real World."

In government class, students at Warsaw High (in Warsaw, Ind.) learn that our country is supposed to be a meritocracy. But the social structure in school seems more like a caste system, with prom queens and jocks at the top and everyone else scrambling to find his or her place farther down the ladder.

Megan is one of those young women who was born to rule. She's blonde, meticulously groomed and knows how to win people's confidence by seeming nice without really being nice -- that's an art. She's also secretly terrified she won't get into Notre Dame, the alma mater of most of her family.

Colin, the school's star basketball player and the son of a professional Elvis impersonator, is well aware a scholarship is his only hope if he wants to go to college, and he's under tremendous pressure to impress the scouts from various universities.Jake, on the other hand, would be satisfied if he could just get the new girl in town, Lorrin, to pay attention to him. Unfortunately, she's more interested in Jake's buddy, Mike. After all, Jake has acne; Mike has sideburns.

High school queen Megan has popularity to spare, but she's got problems of her own in AMERICAN TEEN.

The most fascinating of the bunch turns out to be Hannah, a fledgling artist who declares that "Warsaw's such a conservative place, and I'm so not conservative." Her year is clouded by the increasing dread that she may have inherited the manic depression that has all but ruined her mother's life.

Even so, Hannah lives out a PRETTY IN PINK scenario when she attracts the attention of popular guy Mitch, much to her own surprise: "Did the orbit of Earth just reverse?" Hannah gasps. She gets him to do risky stuff, like watching BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN; he gets her to attend parties where the allegedly cool kids get together to drink and gossip. Hannah would probably have a much better time hanging out with her faithful friend Clarke, but even a would-be non-conformist can become a fool for love.

In fact, the message that comes through loud and clear in Burstein's film is that teen angst is pretty much the same, no matter when you experience it. Although the Warsaw kids may have cell phones and iPods -- and one of the school's trophy cases may be full of pictures of grads who are serving in Iraq -- their problems could be taken from the script of a mid-1980s Molly Ringwald movie. Everyone wrestles with the same unanswerable question that has plagued high-schoolers for generations: How can you stand out and fit in at the same time?

Perhaps worried that her film would seem too much like reality TV, Burstein inserted some goofy animated segments to illustrate the subjects' thoughts and fantasies. But AMERICAN TEEN works best when she lets these seniors -- each of whom turns out to be more complex than he or she initially seems -- speak for themselves.

"My life sucks right now," Jake admits. "But what if it's even worse after high school?" He's not the first person to wonder about that, and it's safe to say he won't be the last.