'American Teen' Trailer: Is This the New Breakfast Club?
When American Teen first premiered back in January at the Sundance Film Festival, audience reaction was very very positive. But then came the big, elephant-in-the-corner question: How do you sell a real-life, big-screen documentary about teenagers to teenagers? Would they look at it and think, "Um, okay, so it's like a longer episode of MTV's True Life?"
Early buzz (including some from our own James Rocchi) was touting American Teen as the next Breakfast Club, with one clear difference: This one was real. The first poster for the film took those early festival reviews to heart and offered up a remake of The Breakfast Club poster, but with these new kids in the old poses. Now comes the first trailer, which definitely keeps the same Breakfast Club tone only we don't hear any "Don't you ... forget about me" in the background. Check it out above and let us know what you think.
Teenagers: Will you go see this in theaters?
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Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Exactly, it looks like it came from some MTV special. And it isn't "American Teen" because I don't live in a conservative town with (what looks like) a very big school. I live in a small suburb of a big city on the east coast and it's completely different.
Posted at 5:10PM on Apr 12th 2008 by AJ
3. ha. i wanna see it.
Posted at 5:33PM on Apr 12th 2008 by Shannon
4. So the closest thing we get to a minority is 2 seconds of a basketball player on a bus? This doesn't seem like they really tried too hard to build a real tapestry of what American teenagers are like. Or maybe since they stereotype the kids so hard they didn't want to use minorities because stereotyping them might get them into more hot water than when they do it to white kids. Then again that black kids does play basketball. This looks lame.
Posted at 6:11PM on Apr 12th 2008 by Jordan Gray
5. The lack of black students isn't necessarily the work of clever editing -- I was in the same graduating class as the students they filmed, and I can recall about three black classmates off the top of my head.
There were quite a few Hispanic students at Warsaw, though, so any shortage of those is probably a result of them trying to whitewash the film.
Posted at 6:14PM on Apr 13th 2008 by Tiger
6. As a 19-year-old who graduated from high school a year ago, this seems quite interesting. Or, maybe I should say, as a young film enthusiast who wants to be a film critic, this seems quite interesting. Either way, I'd certainly go see this. I wonder how much was at least slightly planned, or if the filmmaker just got very lucky to find the right kids at the right place. Regardless, I'd pay for a (super-expensive) ticket.
Posted at 7:36PM on Apr 12th 2008 by FutureColumnist
7. It is my personal and completely unjustified opinion, based on watching the movie being filmed but not actually seeing the final product, that quite a bit of it was slightly planned. :)
Posted at 6:36PM on Apr 13th 2008 by Tiger
8. So I keep hearing all this hype about this movie, then I watch the trailer. Ho...hum. What's the big deal here.
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
Posted at 9:22PM on Apr 13th 2008 by Cufford
11. terrible title but this looks fantastic
Posted at 4:51AM on Apr 17th 2008 by peterbuldge
1. "The table is greasy now, because I put my face on it"
But I wouldn't go see it, at least not in theaters. I don't mind documentaries but you see stuff on MTV all the time, and this is just for a modern audience.
Posted at 4:54PM on Apr 12th 2008 by NvM