K-SCORE: 98
Creators: Dan Perrault, Tony Yacenda
Starring: Jimmy Tatro, Tyler Alvarez, Griffin Gluck, Camille Hyde, Camille Ramsey, Calum Worthy, Ryan O’Flanagan, Genevieve Hannelius, Karly Rothenberg, Saxon Sharbino, Sean Carrigan
Spoiler Level: Very Minor
The crime: someone spray-painted twenty-seven dicks on faculty cars in the school parking lot of Hanover High. The accused: stoner, loser, YouTube prankster Dylan Maxwell. Under investigation by sophomore filmmaker Peter Maldonado: everyone.
American Vandal is brilliant beyond compare. The experience of watching the first time is so much better, so much more enjoyable than most entertainment that you’ll consume that I not only recommend that you do so, but that you cherish each episode as the mystery unfolds. The crux of its brilliance is in its tone. It unyieldingly follows the True Crime documentary style while exploring the bizarre minutia of this largely unimportant act of vandalism at this fairly typical suburban high school, and in so doing it catches you constantly taking it all way too seriously. In the eight episodes, I probably stopped myself fifty times just so I could clear my head and think: “Should I really care about this? This is about who painted dicks on cars.” And then, sure enough, moments later I’m back in, coming up with my own theories, raging at Alex Tramboli’s exaggerations and lies to get attention, pouring over Sarah Pearson’s hookup list, squinting at the background of social media footage of Nana’s party, demanding justice for the wrongly accused. Because it’s simultaneously so well done and so absurd, it’s beyond hysterical. I haven’t laughed so hard at a show since I first discovered Archer. And eventually you kind of surrender to American Vandal and let it take you on its ride.
“Find out why all these girls are hooking up with Pat Micklewaite.”
The characters in this mockumentary are fantastic and the creators seemed to have selected their best ones to get the most screen time. The actor who played Dylan, Jimmy Tatro, is either a genius or he’s just that guy and the casting director deserves a ton of credit for finding him. Basically every interview reinforces this guy as the goofball, obvious-choice to accuse and expel, victim of this essentially minor and stupid crime, and he develops substantially over the course of the season. The documentary filmmakers also evolve to come to a greater understanding of what their film is really about, but they are unrelenting in their pursuit of truth. Every time the documentary reveals some seedy subsection of the school and its social spheres and thus runs over people in its pursuit of truth, I was thrilled. When those people lash out at Peter, the documentarian, he just puts that right in the movie. Yes, Peter! Find out why all these girls are hooking up with Pat Micklewaite. We need to know whose ipad the physics teacher stole. We need to know what Christa Carlyle’s been protesting. We need to know why Vice Principal Keene hadn’t uploaded the teacher complaint files and what was in those files. This is about more than them, more than you, more than anything! This is the most important film ever made! (Wait, am I in too deep again?)
Most fiction with an eye on high school gets it really wrong, be it Dead Poet Society or The Perks of Being a Wallflower with their naive beliefs in their students altruism and desire for out-of-the-ordinary inspiration, or She’s All That or Easy A with its picture of a world where love is pure, the students and teachers are great, but they’re hiding under the veil of teenage nerdiness, or American Pie or Superbad, which would have you believe high school’s a primed bomb waiting to explode in drunken sexual revelry. American Vandal is much closer to accurate. It’s got a broader scope and narrower vision. Very few of the characters universally come off well, which somehow makes it feel like a real high school. The ones that thrive in this system are in many ways as twisted as the ones that don’t. They’re all well designed, and the documentary exposes their flaws, makes ‘em real. If the creators can recapture the magic of season one as they ante up again with a new story arc, I don’t think they could find the upper limit on the amount of this I would watch.