The Myth of the American Sleepover

I suppose one has to excuse that The Myth of the American Sleepover, a 2010 film written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, reminds a viewer of so many other movies: American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, Superbad, just to name a few. It's the last weekend of summer vacation, and all over suburban Detroit kids are gathering. The girls are having sleepovers, the boys are reading nudie mags and wandering the streets, like dogs in heat.

This film is quite a bit different from the others, mostly in tone. The Myth of the American Sleepover is perhaps the dullest teen movie ever made. These kids don't get into any real trouble--they drink, and make out a little--but there's no actual sex, no ribald escapades, no body liquids exchanged. Instead Mitchell seems to have some sort of point to make, but I'm not sure what it is. At one point a character talks about the myth of teenage life, but it really didn't make much sense.

The film is basically about four kids: Maggie, who will be going to high school, who has a crush on the older boy who works at the swimming pool; Scott, a college man who becomes obsessed with finding twin girls he shared a moment with back in high school; Rob, who tries to find a beautiful girl he saw in the supermarket (this is a pretty direct rip-off of a plot line in American Graffiti); and Claudia, a new girl in town who is dating a senior, and gets revenge on another girl with the use of Ouija board.

These stories are all told with the sullen intensity of a Russian novel. Contrasted with the other films, this one is not much fun. I did like that most of the actors actually look the age they are supposed to be playing, but others things rang false. I'm not sure what time period this is in (that there are no cell phones indicates it's in the past), but it just seemed off to me. I'll buy that there's a hangout where kids make out, but I don't believe that cute girls go there, stake out a spot, and wait for boys to come, like hookers in the windows in the red light district of Amsterdam.

I do remember acting like some of the kids do in this film, but with the benefit of age I just want to tell them, "Lighten up. It's all downhill from here."