american teen

i dont remember high school being quite like this...
this is a reality movie, i wouldnt call it a documentary exactly, because it plays more like a reality show on vh1 than any sort of high brow investigative film. the makers of the movie follow five high school students as they go through their senior year. each of the individuals have their own category that they fill: the cheerleader, the indie chick, the nerd, the jock, and the cool kid. we follow them through out the year as they go about their activities, each of them recording video journals and the like as the year goes on. we start to get past the cliches and find out what these people are really like. as the year goes on, there are a bunch of different situations that arise: the indie chick gets dumped right after she gives up her virginity, the cheerleader gets involved in a friend's nude photo getting put on line for the whole school to see, the jock chokes when the college recruiters come, the nerd finds a girl that then breaks his heart, etc. some of the things they deal with are universal and interesting to watch as these teens try to deal with real life, but much of it was way outside my realm of experience. i guess i had a pretty bland high school experience, so i had a hard time relating on my of the struggles that these kids went through.