Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Sundance is winding down. We only have one more full day of press screenings then it’s back to begging for tickets for the public ones. A lot of press have gone home, most of the stars have gone home, but now’s when the real deal movie buffs come out. TBAs are filling in, the awards will be announced soon and some of the more popular films are getting additional screenings. One such flick was AMERICAN TEEN, a documentary I’d written off. I mean, another documentary about tough high school life? Doesn’t sound all that new or interesting, but I’d been hearing some surprisingly high praise for the film from fest goers, so when it got slotted into one of tonight’s TBAs I made sure to see it. AMERICAN TEEN is the best documentary I’ve seen since KING OF KONG. And I’ve seen some really good documentaries since, especially here in Park City. Now the movie is totally different than KING OF KONG, but in terms of entertainment value and the level to which you get personally invested with the people on-screen it stands eyeball to eyeball with KING OF KONG. The doc follows four main people going to a small town Indiana high school. All are seniors and all have serious issues. You have Megan Krizmanich, the popular blonde who is stereotypically bitchy and exclusive, but has so much insecurity and personal life trauma that bubbles up as we get to know her. You have Jake Tusing, the geek. He plays video games, he has bad acne and is desperate for a strong romantic relationship. He’s shy, but a genuinely nice person. You have Colin Clemens, the jock. He’s not the stereotypical jock, at least in terms of how he deals with other students. He’s a nice guy, but the pressures of being the star basketball player finally get to him as he realizes this season will determine whether or not he can get a scholarship. If he doesn’t, his dad is all but forcing him to join up with the Air Force. Finally you have Hannah Bailey. Imagine mixing Ally Sheedy from BREAKFAST CLUB with Molly Ringwald from PRETTY IN PINK (with a little bit of Sam from 16 CANDLES thrown in). She’s the arty “different” girl in this small conservative town. But she’s sweet, just unconditionally kind. And cute as a button to boot. The typical high school drama plays a factor (bad break-ups, college acceptance, the different cliques conflicting with each other, etc), but what’s really unique about this doc is how well director Nanette Burstein picked her subjects. My emotions ran from pity to elation to sorrow to happiness and everything in between. There’s some amazing cruelty in this movie, mostly at the hands of Megan. There’s one girl who falls for Megan’s best friend (a guy Megan clearly has a crush on) and they end up hooking up. Afterwards, this girl sends the guy a topless photo of herself and unfortunately for her Megan gets a hold of it and forwards it to everybody in the school. If that wasn’t enough Megan also holds a party where all the popular girls call this poor girl’s voicemail and leave incredibly cruel and hurtful messages. In an interview later with this girl, you see her try to put a brave “what can ya’ do?” face on it, but her eyes and quivering lip expose her true feelings. The geek gets his fair share of abuse, too. Actually, everybody except Megan are put through some horrendous emotional shit. In fact, I kept thinking of Matt Stone’s words of wisdom from BOWLING FROM COLUMBINE. I wanted to go to Hannah, Colin and Jake (and Erica, the poor topless photo girl) and look them in the eye and explain how high school isn’t the entire world. These bitches and assholes that are making you miserable have reached their full potential already and these guys will go on to bigger and better things, lead more meaningful lives. I think it’s a testament to the documentary that I was emotionally involved enough to want to console these poor people. Hannah has her heart broken during the course of the film and I wanted to sit her down and tell her that these shallow douches aren’t all that life has to offer and even though I don’t know this girl I was worried that these experiences were going to kill the excited, kind soul I was introduced to. On top of picking great subjects, there’s another fascinating aspect to this documentary. There are animated sequences for each person, including a fucking brilliant-looking stop-motion sequence that would give Tim Burton a boner. What they do is pick an interesting time or story or event and have one of our main people talk about it as different artists and different animation places bring these moments to life with artist representations of these kids. The dark stop-motion one for Hannah, after a harsh break-up, is great and there’s a really funny computer animated sequence for Jake. We see him playing video games, specifically Zelda, and suddenly we see an acne-ridden Link rescuing a Zelda version of one of the girl’s he’s sweet on. I walked away from this one beaming. I loved this documentary. It’s entertaining and emotionally moving. Sometimes it’s mean, sometimes it’s funny as hell, sometimes it’s sweet, but it’s never boring, repetitive or dull. AMERICAN TEEN got picked up at Sundance by Paramount Vantage. Good grab, guys. This is a great movie. When it comes near you don’t pass it up. Alright, I’m going to catch some sleep, but I have another few reviews half-written (put on the back-burner after seeing this one) and a couple more I still haven’t started. Tons of stuff still to come, squirts. -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
