Number Four - AMERICAN TEEN
This very sincere documentary about a high school in the small town of Warsaw, Indiana is both funny and touching. With the orgy of reality television in this day and age, one has to be weary of what exactly "reality" is. But American Teen, despite its seemingly formulated plot points, climaxes and stereotypical characters, is about as genuine as it gets.
The story is set around four main characters: Hannah, an arty girl looking to escape conservative Indiana for California after high school; Colin, a popular basketball star looking for a scholarship to college to avoid going into the Army; Geoff, the quintessential nerdy kid looking for a girlfriend and his place among the high school elite; and Meghan, the most popular, and meanest, drama queen in school. The movie follows each of the characters as they struggle to make the most of their senior year and deal with the difficulties of getting into the college of their dreams.
What is different about American Teen is the familiarity everyone can share with it, no matter how different out teenage years were. Every school has characters like Hannah and Geoff and Meghan and Colin and everyone can relate to what they are going through. These are not contestants on a trashy show like The Real World or Flavor of Love - oversexed, awful individuals who we love to despise - these are real people with real problems that don't seem too far off from what we all experienced at age eighteen.
American Teen is easily one of the best films of the year for its honesty and it humor and its heartbreaking reality. One of the best documentaries of all time.
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