Directed by Nanette Burstein. (PG) 101 min. Opens Aug 1.
There’s no doubt that Nanette Burstein’s American Teen — a (too) slickly produced look at contemporary American adolescence as experienced by a group of teenagers in Warsaw, Indiana — compels fascination. Even those whose high school wounds healed long ago should cringe at the fresh cruelties captured by Burstein’s camera: when sensitive, self-described “supergeek” Jake is dumped by his girlfriend, whom we’ve recently seen canoodling in a pool with some other dude, his self-deprecating heartbreak leaps from the screen.
Jake is thus the Anthony Michael Hall in Burstein’s consciously John Hughes-ian scheme. That’d make arty outsider Hannah the Ally Sheedy manqué, affable jock Colin a wirier Emilio Estevez and blond overachiever Megan a corn-fed Molly Ringwald. (There’s no Judd Nelson here, though a certain rebellious streak manifests itself across each of the principals.)
Calling the film a real-life Breakfast Club isn’t really that reductive. Burstein should be commended for the level of trust she engendered in her subjects over a year-long shoot, yet their stories have been so carefully — bordering on dishonestly — edited that the film plays uncomfortably like a scripted feature. Distracting animated interludes and editorializing pop-music cues further detract from the immediacy of the footage, as does the problem of attempting to observe the most camera-savvy generation in history, but American Teen is watchable and affecting in spite of its flaws.