'Teen' doc more insightful about American parents

Nanette Burstein's provocative documentary "American Teen" doesn't really tell us much about high school students we already didn't know.

Who doesn't know that teens are insecure and immature, make stupid mistakes, say the wrong things, are constantly searching (for love, acceptance, self-fulfillment or a purpose in life) and too easily fall into stereotypical social cliques right out of "The Breakfast Club"?

It's what "American Teen" tells about the adults that turns this quicksilver, tightly edited wannabe-reality-TV show into an accidental expose of the American middle-class.

The problems of the main students in Burstein's doc don't look half as serious as those affecting their parents, who put their children's fragile egos through meat grinders or insistently project their own limited dreams on to their children with little concern about their own personalities or best interests.

We're not exactly talking about parents becoming Mommy and Daddy Dearest here. Nonetheless, "American Teen" packs enough fodder for Dr. Phil to fill out an entire TV season just on the authority figures alone.

After "auditioning" several Midwestern high schools, Burstein finally took her cameras to film the senior year at Warsaw, Indiana, where Burstein's cameras and wireless microphones - actually hooked onto the belts of the main "stars" - followed several key students around for 10 months, capturing amazingly personal, even incriminating events in miles of footage whittled down to a trim, engaging 101 minutes.

A voice-over narration introduces us to Warsaw, a small town where sports reigns supreme and that means the basketball captain, Colin, is "next to Jesus." Colin is a friendly guy, average student and a bona fide court star. We also meet Megan, a blond social diva who heads everything from Student Council to the prom. She's rich, and a word that rhymes with "rich."

At least that's the assessment of Hannah, a true diamond-in-the rough. An outsider by her own definition, Hannah is a rebel who plays music, loves the arts and can't wait to get out of Warsaw, go to California and become a filmmaker. She has a sexually ambiguous best friend, and has been in love with her boyfriend for a long time.

Jake describes himself as a marching band supergeek. His self-confidence is lost somewhere in a black hole, so he is given to saying things that undermine his self-image and embarrass the very girls he's trying to impress. ("Look at all the grease!" he says to a girl after he puts his acne-covered face on a dining table.)

Oh, yes. The parents.

Nice-guy Colin's dad bluntly tells his son that he won't send him to college. He'll have to get basketball scholarships or else. This comes from a man who dresses up like Elvis and entertains the locals in sequins and mutton chops.

Megan's dad graduated from Notre Dame University, and he makes it abundantly clear that she will be a complete failure if she can't get in to his alma mater. The unspoken pressure gets intense.

And Hannah? Her parents sabotage her dreams at every turn by telling her to accept her life as is. Her mom is brutally blunt: "You're not special!"

Jake's parents hardly make an appearance with their son in this movie.

"American Teen" has been criticized for appearing to be manipulated or coached in some scenes. I understand this, especially when Burstein's "characters" easily fall into dramatic events that play out with tremendous humor, empathy and pathos at just the right moments for storytelling purposes.

Is it rigged? Certainly no more than any "reality" TV show. Is it insightful? Yes, but not in the way the director intended.

Burstein creates a documentary for our time, one complete with daring, animated sequences designed to illustrate the internal emotional turmoil of the students. Cheesy?

Yes, but they work. Even if Burstein doesn't realize that her "American Teen" is on a double bill with another movie called "American Parent."

"American Teen"

Directed by: Nanette Burstein

Other: A Paramount Vantage release. At the Century Centre and River East in Chicago, and the Evanston CineArts 6. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual situations, smoking and drinking. 101 minutes.