If you dug American High, the canceled high-school-based reality show recently brought back to life by PBS, you should definitely check out Jim McKay's Our Song, a gritty but fictitious look at the lives of three young girls and how they spent their summer.  McKay shot the entire film using a handheld camera, which, given the overabundance of reality programming as of late, makes Song look and feel too real to be watching from an air-conditioned theatre.  This is the kind of thing you watch from your couch, possibly while involved in some kind of drinking game (every time Mike says something to piss off Coral, you have to drink a shot).

Armed with a budget of under $500,000, writer/director McKay (Girls Town) headed to Crown Heights, Brooklyn to tell this story of three girls hovering around their 16th birthdays.  Each is a member of the Jackie Robinson Steppers Marching Band, who may be headed to Alaska for a competition, and each has just found out their school is being closed because of a recently discovered asbestos problem.  Instead of rejoicing, like most kids their age, these girls are upset, realizing the commute to a new school could add hours to their scholastic day.  They're good kids, for the most part, which is part of the film's offbeat realism.

The girls are played by Anna Simpson, Melissa Martinez and the promising Kerry Washington, who had a part in Save the Last Dance.  Like real girls their age, they have to deal with the various everyday problems causing teen angst: divorce, pregnancy, suicide, clashes with parents and fights with siblings. But there's fun stuff, like movies, ice cream, sleepovers, birthday parties and shoplifting, to offset the trauma.  There isn't a lot of excitement, as the film is meant to be a slice of life, but it also makes the 95-minute running time seem to last forever.

The coolest thing about Song may be the opening credits, where McKay forgoes the typical "A Film By" credit and lists the names of everyone involved in the production instead of just his own.  Song looks terrific, with photography courtesy of Jim Denault (Boys Don't Cry).  R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe serves as the film's executive producer.

1:35 –

for language and some teen drug use