Good start, but then it gets ruined

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The DVD box describes "Confessions of an American Girl" as a "quirky dark comedy". If you are going to make a "black comedy" about a dysfunctional family, it better be entertaining. In order for the film to be entertaining, it better be funny. If it's not going to be funny, it better not be depressing. Unfortunately, "Confessions of an American Girl" is not only not funny, but it is both pointless and depressing. Family goes to visit their jerk father in prison, family come away agreeing he is indeed a jerk. End of story. Throw in some incest, homosexuality, endless suicide attempts, along with the depression, and you wind up with a bad movie. Not recommended. - MERK

Hey, who wants to watch a "dark comedy" about a trailer park teen who gets knocked-up and decides she wants to tell her lifer dad about it at the upcoming prison picnic? It's got Jenna Malone in it, that girl in "Saved!" and "Donnie Darko". Sounds like fun, huh? Honestly, it totally does to me, though I tend to gravitate to dysfunctional family indy flicks. But, and I really hate to say it, this movie was a really, really boring watch - every time I looked at the DVD display I was shocked anew at how little movie time had elapsed compared to the eons it felt like. Some kind of reverse "dog years" effect kicks in when one is profoundly bored.And closing my eyes didn't help because I could still hear the atrocious dialog. I found myself wondering aloud how much of it was ad-libbed because I couldn't imagine anyone would sign on to the script if the lines I was hearing were actually put to paper. Whatever the secret to its non-success, the end result was the same: either the writer, the cast, or both were unable to milk anything from the weak setup almost every scene was saddled with. Yes, there was the occasional one-liner that was obviously too witty to have been made up on the spot - but those bright spots stuck out like sore thumbs because they were drowned in oceans of pointless, rambling, non-interactive dialog. You could probably scrape together enough of those snappy lines to make a good trailer, but that I can't confirm as there was no trailer supplied on the DVD (for this movie anyway - lame - I consider the inclusion of a trailer the minimum standard for "special" features).Also the half-hearted suicide scenes were not fun at all to watch - not because I imagined that she would actually kill herself (this time), but because such botched attempts in real-life would likely yield permanent neck injuries or severed wrist tendons, so I was left with nothing but a cringing response. The plastic spork, the broken photo frame glass, and the flimsy macrame noose tied with a bad knot to the rickety old branch (which of the three will give out, you wonder, because one absolutely must for this overly simplistic movie to drearily continue), I mean, come on. And the suicider as a humorous element has been to much better effect in other movies ("Crimes of the Heart" comes to mind), though I can never fully get into it myself.I don't make the rules, but the bottom line is movies that don't have much in the way of action must then rely on and have some kind of payout in the dialog department. The cardinal sin of this movie is that it has nether. Maybe for dyed-in-the-wool Jenna Malone fans, definitely for film school freshmen who need instruction on how NOT to make a movie, others should sit this one out (consider yourself warned). After our viewing the DVD went immediately into the "give it away, sell it, but for pity's sake keep it away from the collection or we might accidentally watch it again someday" pile. Two stars.

Well, it means, you and your family are all losers and dumber than dirt, unfortunately.The film's central character is Rena Grubb (Jena Malone), a young teenage girl. I don't know Rena's exact age, maybe 13 or 14. She lives in a trailer park with her mother, older brother Jay, and older half-sister, Barbie. Rena's father, John, is in prison serving two life sentences.Rena is not happy. She makes several suicide attempts. Nor does she have much reason to be happy all things considered.She's being used by the popular boy in school, who doesn't even want to be seen in public with her, and then she gets pregnant by him. Her own mother's first pregnancy was at 15 - and the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, evidently.One thing Rena is hanging onto is thoughts of her Daddy. He got sent away when she was very young, so she has only scant memories of him. She feels Daddy not being there is why things are going so badly for her and the family.Rena finally badgers her mother into all of them attending the picnic at the prison and seeing John.A whole lot of truths are revealed during that family picnic at the prison.To say much more would give too much away so I'll stop at this point, and say only that the film was excellent. It is a dark comedy at times, poignant at other times and held my interest completely.All the performers gave 100% to their roles.10 stars.

If you like black comedy you should enjoy "Confessions of an American Girl". Rena (Jena Malone) is the embodiment of that old cartoon where the guy is sitting on the ground with a noose around his neck and a broken rope in his hand; captioned "some people can't do anything right". Rena lives in a mobile home with her somewhat "strange" family, is suicide challenged, is pregnant by a guy who doesn't want to be seen in public with her, and blames it all on the unfair eight year absence of her loving father, who is in prison for murder. Her dim memories of her father are somewhat biased. The highway and its exit ramps are metaphors for her life and her desire to end her life.Alica Witt plays Rena's half-sister. Because Malone and Witt are arguably the most intelligent actresses in Hollywood, you immediately wonder about the wisdom of casting them as moronic trailer trash. But Malone has a special talent for playing this kind of "slack-jawed" character and Witt's standard sarcastic teen character works fine even in this environment. Their scenes together are the best ones in the film; with their reconciliation scene toward the end especially good. Brad Renfro does a good job as Rena brother, O-Lon Jones (remember the waitress in Seinfeld's "Bubble Boy" episode) is excellent in a small role and Clifton Collins Jr. is great as Buddy, the prison trustee, who quickly sizes up the situation and sets the forces of change in motion.While "American Girl" is an above average film, its main scene (the picnic at the prison which actually takes up the majority of the film) pushes it into cinema classic territory. This scene is an example of the way storytelling should be done, and the pacing is absolutely inspired. It is staged perfectly as Buddy orchestrates a sequence of revelations that changes all four visiting family members. Even if you hate the subject of this film it is worth watching just to see how wonderfully they manage this climatic scene. The disastrous visit over, the family leaves the prison with the statement "it went better than it could have".Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.