American Teen

Billed as a modern day, real life The Breakfast Club, I went into American Teen with apprehension. But first a shocking confession: I've never seen The Breakfast Club. My mother's hatred for Molly Ringwald, especially in Pretty in Pink, which I have seen, prevented me from seeing most John Hughes movies in my youth. As I got older, I started to make up for lost time, but I have still yet to watch The Breakfast Club, or Sixteen Candles for that matter. I know, I know, I'm a film major. I'm on it.

ANYWAY, I know the gist of The Breakfast Club so that's all that mattered in watching American Teen. It's weird to think about how long I've been out of high school, because I feel like I can remember every day of it, when in reality, I remember relatively little. American Teen made it all come rushing back to me.

The film is a documentary of a few students in one high school's senior class. They, I'm sure, were chosen because they seemed to embody a certain iconic high school persona, yet as the film goes on those stereotypes are broken down to unveil the real humans underneath. We have the jock, the popular bitchy girl, the artsy alternative girl, the heartthrob, the geek and various other hangers-on. As the film progresses we see what motivates them (usually pushy parents), what hurts them (breaking up via text message) and what makes them happy (finally finding a date for the prom).

My favorite storyline, predictably, was that of Hannah, the artsy alternative girl who dreamed of moving to California after graduation. As the film goes on Hannah is dumped, not once, but twice. One of those break-ups pushes her into a fit of depression, which she struggles to get out of, but she still manages to come out of her senior year prepared to handle the next step.

The movie made me think about myself at that age and how far I've come. Like I said, it's weird to remember when my life revolved around yearbook, newspaper, my car and pining for a guy that never would like me. I'm weird in the sense that I still have my core group of friends from high school, some I see every day, others that are just a phone call away. And while the movie didn't make me miss high school exactly, it did make me think about it in a way that made me realize how charmed my high school days were. I had no pushy parents, no mean girls making fun of me (to my knowledge) and no heartbreaks like Hannah did. True, I didn't have a date to prom, I never got THAT guy and I did write "September 11th" as "September 1st" in our yearbook, along with other errors that haunt me to this day, but I also had incredibly caring and funny friends that are still there for me whenever I need them.

Whoa! Got sappy there for a second. The movie is good. You should see it.

Edit: Also, it had to be said that I was way too attracted to "The Heartthrob" in the movie. Then I remembered, he's 17. And then I realized, I don't care. So that's uber-villians and 17-year old boys (Harry Potter included), if anyone's keeping count.