Filmmaker Nanette Burstein gives audiences a hall pass to the lone high school in Warsaw, Ind. (population: 12,000), and what they learn from "American Teen" may leave them relieved, shocked or reassured.

Relieved because, thank goodness, their high school days are behind them. Shocked at the students' mean-spiritedness, boneheaded moves and sheer resilience. And reassured because they or their sons and daughters are struggling with the same anxieties as Hannah, Colin, Jake, Megan and Mitch.

Burstein follows the quintet, all members of the Class of '06 at Warsaw Community High School, through their senior year, and if she had invented some of the details you wouldn't believe them.

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'American Teen'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, sexual material, some drinking and brief smoking -- all involving teens.
• Web site: 'American Teen'

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Colin's father, for instance, is an Elvis impersonator who tells his son his only ticket to college is a basketball scholarship. Hannah lives with her grandmother because her father has gone to Ohio for work and her mother suffers from manic depression.

Megan, the daughter of a prominent surgeon, is the pretty, popular girl you love to hate, until you learn about a family tragedy. It softens the hard edges of a spoiled girl who treats her enemies and, sometimes, friends with cruelty.

"American Teen" almost has the feel of a fictional TV show, as we occasionally are privy to information -- one boy's girlfriend is stepping out on him -- before the teens are.

Burstein, whose claim to fame until now had been "The Kid Stays in the Picture" about movie producer Robert Evans, uses animation, voice-overs and music to help to tell her story. Chronicling a slice of a generation that is as tech savvy as they come, it all makes sense.

The five tend to fall into Hollywood types -- homecoming queen, captain of the basketball team, artsy rebel, outcast, heartthrob -- but Burstein gives us a warts-and-all portrait of them.

		What do teens think? Post-Gazette.com invites teenagers to tell us what they think of "American Teen." Did the film about five high school students in Warsaw, Ind., feel real to you? Did it strike a false note? E-mail seberson@post-gazette.com and put "American Teen" in the subject field. Share your thoughts, plus your name, age and neighborhood or school by Aug. 31, and we'll publish your views and reviews online at post-gazette.com/movies.

If you're surprised that teens would drink or destroy property while being photographed, Burstein says vandalism is common in the small town, and she was protective in not including other moments of questionable judgment.

The director-producer was lucky with how some of her story arcs turned out, as when two of the five become a sweet but improbable couple. And just when your heart bleeds for a geeky boy whose acne comes and goes with alarm, he finds his own rite of passage and an erstwhile girlfriend.

Parents are largely absent or cameo players, and impatience with the teens (or the adults) gives way to concern and curiosity about their fates, revealed at the end. If you can get through high school, you can probably get through anything, it seems.

As Burstein intended, you see the constraints of a small town where there is only one high school and where there's not much in the way of big-city entertainment. Unless, of course, you count the Elvis impersonator, who's not half bad.

Opens today at the Squirrel Hill Theater.