American Teen is a documentary-styled film done in the vein of Real World and the like. It showcases the lives of several teenagers living in Warsaw, Indiana as they go through their last year of high school. First off, I found the "acting" to be rather forced and fake. While there were a couple of interesting characters whose lives were chronicled, I got the feeling that we were never seeing the real truth.

Hannah Bailey is the free-spirited and artsy rebel chick. She doesn't fit into her community whatsoever and really wants to escape to the West Coast. Her boyfriend breaks up with her and in response, she simply stays out of school for several weeks. Like that's going to make anything better? She almost doesn't graduate because of it. Then there's the popular girl, Megan Krizmanich, who is completely annoying and self-absorbed. I guess that's the point, but she was a chore to watch whenever she came on screen. At one point, she gets protective and angry when one of her friends dates her best guy friend and she and her gal pals decide to destroy the girl, sending a topless picture of her to every school email address. Then later, this same girl is seen chatting with them and eating lunch. Huh?

Colin Clemmons is just a typical nice-guy jock. He wants a basketball career and so does his father, so much so that it is all his dad talks about for him. His storyline is somewhat boring, but he seems like a nice fellow. Mitch Reinholt is a fellow jock and the hot guy in the school. He seems nice enough and begins dating Hannah, but when she doesn't fit in with his friends, he dumps her by text. How crappy is that? Then there's the stereotypical nerd, Jake Tusing. He loves videogames and is in the school's band and he has trouble getting a girl. He does snag a freshman who quickly begins cheating on him and dumps him, then meets another girl that he clicks with, but things don't work out. At least he gets a prom date.

While the filmmakers did try to do something a little different by interspersing animations of the hopes and dreams of the kids in between situations, it still fell flat. Yes, it was funny to see Jake in a Zelda-like animation winning his dream girl, but it still failed to be very entertaining. In the way of special features, there were some deleted scenes to watch, plus a few mini interviews, but they were rather boring. Overall, if you like the reality TV type shows, especially ones focusing on relationships and/or teens, you may want to give this film a rent. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. I'm not a teen, but this film didn't hold my interest at all, quite frankly.