"Chain Camera" is a pretty interesting human nature documentary about the life of teenagers in and around American suburbs, all taking place in Los Angeles. It's an intriguing experiment in humanity and a rather blunt and candid view into the psyche's of troubled, lonely, and lovelorn kids as we experience the lives of different people through
a camera that gets passed around catching real life in true form. Some kids express their feelings about their own life, another young man is experiencing woes in life after spending most of his life caring for his alcoholic mother. Sometimes we get to witness some of the subjects just having fun, sometimes we just get to see them showing off their family and
some of them just go on about their own lives and emotions, most of which is pretty gripping.

We witness a stunning window into a multi-cultural world view which director Kirby Dick brings to the audience with so much humility. It's not flashy, nor is it trying to change the movie world, but it does succeed in bringing us closer to the teenage psyche by passing around the camera (ten in all) to over a dozen kids who go to James Marshall High School in Los Angeles, a big school with many students and we witness their assortment of characters including one very proud girl who displays her love for her lesbian girlfriend, another young girl, Stephanie, who loves her father despite the fact he may die any day, and a very passionate musician who models himself after Hispanic rebels, and it's all so fascinating in its realism and sheer blunt nature because we know some of them may not make it in life, and most of them have a lot of hardships ahead of them including the one girl with tourette's who is basically a drug addict, and another, Rosemary, who experiences bulimia to get the perfect body she wants and basically has been abandoned by her father which she still loves.

Within her small window of life we witness her sense of abandonment and desperation to make a better life for herself. Some of them live in the ghetto in small rooms with their family, and one girl has no real aspirations in school, while we also get to see what many view about racism, politics, homosexuality, and just life in general. All of it is very candid and unflinching and I enjoyed watching every minute of it. Kirby Dick, the director never hogs the screen, nor does he attempt to take the camera time away from the kids, all he does is give them the camera (ten in all) and let them play out their life for the audience. A lot of the kids here are stuck in their lives and most of them just want nothing but good things and fame, but we know a few of them are doomed to life's struggles for a long time. There are some few less interesting sketches, but many of them can be very gripping and dark and we see life for all it is, a very hard grueling experience, sometimes with good and sometimes with bad.

As well done as the film is, it seems this is getting somewhere, but where? What's really the point other than really showing what teens think? What's it trying to say to the audience other than that broadly drawn idea and concept. "Chain Camera" succeeds in being candid, but is all too short at times. Only at an hour and a half, I would have liked for this movie to be a whole lot longer and a lot more drawn out in its sketches and concept. There are about a dozen or so sketches involving the teenagers, but they're always too short. Sometimes there's about five or ten minutes devoted to one kid and only about two minutes devoted to others, and the more fascinating people are not that focused on.

I would have liked to learn more about a lot of these people, and more time devoted in drawing out their personalities and their everyday life would have made this a lot more enjoyable in the end, but there's no satisfaction in watching these people because we never get to know them, so ultimately it's pointless to watch because you have no idea what the creators are trying to gear this towards in the end.

"Chain Camera" is an effective and all too realistic look at life of poverty-stricken, and troubled teenager. Though too short in length with the skits focusing on it's subject, it's very satisfying and blunt in its nature.
 

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