I suppose it was quite expectable that a fair sprinkling of teens were in the sparse audience for this week’s preview of Western New York native Nanette Burstein’s shrewdly assembled documentary, American Teen. They were there, presumably, to see themselves represented, and from their voluble reactions during the movie, and the snippets of comment I heard afterward, it seems probable were pretty satisfied with what they were shown. Anyway, it’s probably modestly wholesome that they were interested in any documentary movie, and this one is virtually, or intentionally, calculated to engage youngsters, and probably their elders, too.

Burstein has brought it off with an impressive amount of technical care and cleverly assembled content. Her presentation of five teens in their senior year at a small-town Indiana high school contains the obligatory young angst, hopes, fears, and secret dreams, as well as sometimes almost disabling heartbreak. She’s cast a sharp and sympathetic eye and camera on all this late-adolescent vibe, ardor and self-absorption. Her movie consistently entertains – there are interjections of animation from Blacklist to wittily comment on her teens’ monologues and conversations, for example – and on occasion it’s incisive.

But the results can arouse skepticism about how deeply and broadly her interest goes. From the suspiciously scripty narration the kids are intermittently heard delivering, to the movie’s rather isolating focus on the subjects’ emotional states, American Teen seems sociologically crimped and cramped. There’s no real sense of town and gown. The emphasis is on the personal and interpersonal. Unlike in Frederick Wiseman’s classic of three and one-half decades ago, High School.

Eighty years after Robert and Helen Lynd found the effects of social class at work in Middletown (actually Muncie, Indiana), Burstein seems averse to or cluless about this.

American Teen is a high school documentary for the post-Dawson’s Creek, reality TV era.

—george sax