Word: teens
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...Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 Directed by Sanaa Hamri; rated PG-13; opening Aug. 6 Imagine Sex and the City as an after-school special; that's this sequel to the 2005 film about four teen friends (Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively and Alexis Bledel). Each has a new emotional challenge, and somehow they all end up on a Greek isle. Mamma miasma! The going gets wet at times, but if you have heartstrings, they will be plucked...
Documentary films are mediated too, by the filmmaker's natural desire to find a coherent narrative, to lure you into the stories of the people onscreen--to (it's not a bad word) entertain. Nowhere is this itch to Hollywoodize reality clearer than in American Teen, director Nanette Burstein's account of one year, 2005--06, in the lives of four high school seniors in Warsaw, Ind. It's the rare documentary that could score at the box office, and not just because Paramount Vantage, its distributor, is pushing it hard. You're likely to have an absorbing, unsettling time...
...each teen, Burstein has located a dramatic arc, twist and payoff. Colin needs to rack up points to impress the scouts, so he becomes a selfish player, taking all the shots and not passing off. Will he learn the value of teamwork before the big game? Megan is desperate to get into Notre Dame, where her father and siblings have gone, but she courts suspension with nasty pranks: promiscuously e-mailing a topless photo of another girl and making catty calls to her; wreathing a rival's car in toilet paper, then spray-painting a penis and the word...
...hard not to root for these teens, even Megan, the somehow-poor little rich girl. But it's also tough to ignore their similarities to countless characters in teen dramas and comedies. John Hughes sculpted a career writing about kids like these in The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink; Judd Apatow's Freaks and Geeks mined the same vein. Burstein's film is way more earnest, but she's learned a lot, maybe too much, from the movies' take on teendom. Rather than offer a gritty view, upending the familiar vision of high school angst, she has fashioned...
Which is exactly what could make American Teen a hit. Fulfilling our Hollywood-bred notion about what kids are like, giving us tears and taunts and a little sex: Is that reality? No, that's reali-tainment...