American Teen Review

Last week I went to watch the movie,American Teen, with some awesome youth ministers and we discussed our thoughts afterwards. I wrote this review to youth ministers and all those people out there that love teenagers.  Here is my review of the movie and how you could use it in your youth ministry programs:

American Teen is a documentary on the life of 5 teens (Hannah, Mitch, Megan, Colin, and Jake) in their last year of high school. Before you read on, I would watch this trailer for the movie:

http://www.americanteenthemovie.com/

If you watched the trailer, you saw many of the typical stereotypes in high school (the jock, the geek, the princess "miss perfect", the heart-throb, and the rebel). After watching the movie I think we all could relate to at least one of the characters a little bit. I feel the movie does a really good job showing the struggles and pressures that all teens deal with, especially since this was a movie dealing with real people. The movie doesn't give you any answers on the best way to live your life, but it does show you that everyone has a story and everyone has their problems. Some of the issues you will find in this movie are chastity, family, depression, clicks, real/fake friendships, vandalism, drinking, suicide, money, the need for a boyfriend or girlfriend, loneliness, selfishness in sports and everyday life, hypocrites, and probably more.

One thing that jumped out to all of us that watched this movie was that Christ wasn't active in their lives. The director pointed out at the beginning of this film that this was a predominately Christian community, but you never saw a teen pray or pray for someone else. The whole time I watched this movie I thought how much they needed Jesus, so thank you for bringing Him to our teens!

Another thing that jumped out to me was Hannanh's comment about herself. She felt like she was an "inbetweener", since she didn't fit in with the cool crowd or the geek crowd. The movie called her a rebel because she was so different, but in many ways I felt like Hannah, not because I was a rebel, but because I had friends in both crowds. Having stereotypes (no matter who you are) makes it so hard for you to be yourself and even know yourself in some ways, which was so true to me and I'm sure many of you. I could talk about so many things in this movie, but instead why don't I just jump into how you can use it!

Since this movie is out of theaters now, I will focus on using it when it comes out on video.

1. I would find a time to watch this movie with your core team. You could discuss your teens and how they relate to this movie. You can also look at how you minister and if your reaching all types of teens. Finally, you could drum up many ideas about different issue you all feel needs to be addressed with your teens.

2. This whole movie is about high school life, so you could probably show most of the scenes in this movie for different issues or youth group meetings (LIFE Nights). I felt that I could spend a good amount of time talking about each scene with my youth group and also talking about what Jesus would have said or did if He was there.

3. It would also be a benefit to parents to see because it will help them to remember what high school is like, the pressures teens face, and also how times have changed (ex:internet). The parents in this movie always expressed to their teens what they thought was best for them or what they needed to do, but you didn't hear that they will love them no matter what (and even if they said it, it was hard to believe by how they said it). Nowing you are loved is so important, it changes everything!

4. Be creative and use the gifts God has given you: use your heart and mind and your core team! Discuss what you feel would be the best way to use this movie. Sometimes we don't always utilize our gifts and we miss out on some great opportunities to reach our teens.

5. PRAY for your teens! PRAY for every situation they face! PRAY for all their family and friends! PRAY for their hearts that they may know CHRIST and what He wants to share with them! Every teen in this movie would have dealt with their problems so differently if Jesus was alive in their life!

Finally, thank you for taking time to read this and I hope this is helpful to you all. Know that you all are in my prayers.

You are Loved,

Tom