Paramount Vantage knows exactly what they’re doing with American Teen. After picking up the Nanette Burstein-directed documentary for $1 million at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the studio boutique not only claimed a prime mid-summer release date (July 25th), they decided to go wide. And when you check out this theatrical trailer, you’ll understand why. It looks like Laguna Beach/The Hills with heart.
This might bolster the film’s commercial prospects, but such slickness also raises questions about its veracity; in his review for Variety, Dennis Harvey noted that American Teen is “slick to a fault” and somewhat reminiscent of Todd Phillips’s discredited Frat House. As a fan of Burstein’s previous documentaries (On the Ropes and The Kid Stays in the Picture), I’m more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but there’s just no doubting that the presentation looks awfully suspect; hopefully, this is just a reflection of the kids getting overly comfortable with having a film crew around.
As you can see, Vantage is blatantly marketing American Teen as a reality homage to The Breakfast Club; it’s a beautifully phony gesture that might just confuse its target audience (“This is real, right?”). Then again, they’re so comfortable with the staged travails of Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag, I’m not sure they’ll care if the line between fiction and documentary is being willfully blurred. And if it’s as entertaining as I’ve heard, I’m not sure I’ll care either.
8 comments
The fact that the poster looks like a more straight-faced version of "Not Another Teen Movie" will definitely confuse the audiences.
This doc was filmed in a town about 1/2 hour from where I live. And just knowing the how people are from Warsaw, IN should make this interesting. They come to our city, Ft. Wayne, and act like its the BIG city when it's only about 200,000 people strong. I work in retail and they use "I'm from Warsaw, so…" as an excuse for not knowing some very basic human concepts like what is north/south/east/west. Example (and this has happened more than once to me): I get a call asking where our store is located, "It's just south of the Target on ***** Rd. It's the first building on the same side of the street as Target." Hers' the reply I got, "South? I don't know south." Me, dumbfounded, "Ma'am, you don't know south?" "Well, I'm from Warsaw, so…" Just. Damn. Weird.
I saw this movie and though it's compelling at times and you root for the artsy girl, it's also pretty much just an hour and a half of MTV – very similar, in fact, to "Real World: Cancun" without the bikinis and such a short amount of time to edit from.
It really is nothing all that special.
that will mint money. p.s. i love you kind of money right jer?
That last scene from the trailer is neat. And I would really like to compare my purely fictitious American High-School impression with those pseudo-realistic ones.
i saw this last night and i thought it was great. the filmmakers did a wonderful job of giving each of the kids who are the focus in the film an arc. the music and animation works well to elevate this above something that might just be done in half hour segments on cable.
High school – when having sex with 16 year olds was legal – those were the days.
Do you know what else is weird Zachra? That anyone who "works in retail" can actually look down on someone else. Now shut up and go help Troy fold those cargo shorts in the back of the store.
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