Nearly seamless cuts between archival footage and simulations of teenage social activity using actors, while various narrators give voice to a universal teenager and their trials and tribulations. The archival footage is quite amazing. The film disappoints in its portrayal of teens by ignoring some of the background of the events it covers. It tells of the exploitation of youth without delving deep enough into psychological aspects of young people and what drives them. They are just victims faulted for just wanting to have fun. Some footage of dissident youth, including anti-Nazi groups, but its not true that the political movements of the 1960s were totally engineered by the young. Of course, the draft mobilized many, but at the helm were adults with the needed maturity to bring understanding and run the show. But this is not to say the youth culture was not innovative and important in the 1960s antiwar movement. Many of these "radical" youths went for the money in the 1980s and became "Yuppies" on Wall Street. This film, purporting to be a documentary on teens, ends up being another young adult novel or creature feature where the teenagers save the world. Those tales are fun but life is more complicated than that.
Review of Teenage
