Teenage casts an intoxicating spell, but in the haze of war and underground dance parties, it doesn't have the time to help us understand what the hell it all means.

| Original Score: 7/1 | Mar 28, 2019

It is [an] extremely accomplished and suggestive work, but it also lacks the clarity and insight into the subject matter that is present in the book. It is a film that bewitches in the screening but lingers less in the aftermath.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 7, 2019

An interesting, idiosyncratic piece that, thanks to an excellent edit, creates the impression that we are somehow following one single generation throughout the four decades represented.

| Feb 28, 2019

The collage effect recalls Ken Burns' documentaries for PBS, particularly since Wolf also occasionally inserts still photographs towards which he zooms in slowly in order to approximate movement.

| Aug 22, 2017

The documentary's enjoyable to watch, and refreshingly not tongue-in-cheek. There's a toughness at its core that gives it great value.

| Aug 8, 2017

This movie does have interesting snippets of history about people on society's fringes, especially people who were way ahead of their time in terms of youth culture, but if you want a better overview of this issue, you will have to read the book.

| Original Score: C | Feb 2, 2015

Arty yet superficial treatment of provocative subject matter...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 13, 2014

Insightful docu traces historical evolution of adolescence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 15, 2014

Filmmaker Matt Wolf's Teenage tracks the origins of modern youth culture through the early 20th Century, to intriguing but inconclusive results

| Original Score: 4.5/10 | Aug 18, 2014

More well-crafted experience than historical chronicle, Teenage is an illustrative portrait of adolescence from the attempted point-of-view of those who first made sense of it

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 2, 2014

It's a terrific distraction, but it ultimately leaves you unfulfilled.

| Original Score: B- | May 23, 2014

A roughly chronological jumble of archival footage, unconvincing period reenactments, gauzy voice-overs, and half-baked ideas that makes one yearn for the stolid dullness of a History Channel documentary.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 22, 2014

Deftly weaves together various media in a way that breathes its own youthful, stream-of-conscious life into the documentary genre.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 22, 2014

"Teenage" does what a good documentary should: educate and entertain.

| Original Score: B- | May 22, 2014

Granted, the film's title is taken from Savage's book, but for a documentary which concludes that the teenager is all about the future, it spends too much of its time covering WWII. "Teenage" is a niche historical document.

| Original Score: C+ | May 20, 2014

There's no "there" there in "Teenage," a meandering mess of a documentary that has the feel of a bloated, inchoate term paper.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 8, 2014

Has moments that are quite intriguing, but, like a teenager, it can't seem to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 8, 2014

If by the end, a clear definition of the teenager hasn't emerged, that's cool. Teenagers don't know what they are either.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 8, 2014

Both informative and entertaining [though] less a straightforward cinematic argument than a dreamlike, multilevel evocation.

| Original Score: B | May 1, 2014

We were expecting a light-hearted, fact-filled look at the phenomenon of the "youth market" Western pop culture, but Matt Wolf's documentary is much more than that.

| Apr 25, 2014