That's not necessarily a negative thing, I just don't get why most reviews were so damn glowing about it. The story's actually pretty contrived at times -- that second basketball player who showed up in the middle of the movie out of nowhere just happened to have a lifelong crush on the rebel girl that he just had to explore during the making of this film? And then he just abruptly dumps her because they have nothing in common and he doesn't like her? He clearly just wanted to be in the movie and made that crush up -- and the kids were just so... unspectacular.

The rebel girl is an "artist" who wants to be a director when she grows up, but you never really see her create anything of note in her spare time, and she certainly doesn't make amateur films or anything. So she's pretty much all talk until her after-high school epilogue, in which she claims she's in film school. The two jocks are generic and bland, the popular mean girl is mean, but her offenses aren't anything out of the ordinary (she makes prank phone calls! And teepees houses! Yeah, so did I. Fascinating. Where's my documentary?), and the geek has acne, likes video games and can't get girls, so he's pretty much standard high school geek. He does love taxidermy though, so I will concede that that was unique and hilarious. But overall these kids are just so mundane. They aren't delinquents, they aren't shocking me with their flagrant promiscuity, they drink in moderation, they're not exceptional overachievers. What, exactly, are you supposed to take away from this experience? It's like making a documentary about the soil in Oklahoma because hey, that's Americana, so therefore it's worthy of a 101 minute film.

It's not that the movie's bad, it's just that it wasn't special. The tagline for the film is "Remember high school? It's gotten worse." And the film really doesn't demonstrate that in any way except one story diversion, in which a naive girl decides to text a nude photo of herself to a boy she barely knows, who then of course forwards it to the entire school. I graduated from high school 7 years ago, so that was happening then too, but I do understand that it's a fairly new and particularly awful advancement in high school horror stories. I also understand it happens a lot. Which is terrible and all, but other than that, high school kids, at least the ones displayed here, are exactly like they were when I was in high school a decade ago, and probably for many years before that. So I guess my beef with it is that it was pointless. Yes, we are all aware that high school is an awkward and unforgiving time, and the uncertainty of senior year and where to go with your life is very scary for many people, but the point of a documentary is to open my eyes to something new, and this fails at that in every way.

Or maybe I just didn't get it. Anyone else mystified by the hype?