Rating: 
Summary: This is my life. This was my world.
Review: First of all the Amish women wear white prayer veilings/ coverings. They are not bonnets. Bonnets are black and/or dark blue and worn over the prayer veiling.This movie moved me to tears. I am a Mennonite who grew up among the Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. Many visitors do not understand our way of life. People complain that the Amish are not well educated, well just last week I had an 8 year old Amish girl wait on me at her father's store. She tallied the five items that I bought on a battery operated cash register and cheerfully gave me the correct change counting it out into my hand. This is in such contrast to the urban young man I met about a month ago at McDonalds who although he gave me the incorrect change, argued with me for about three minutes until he finally, finally saw that he had made a mistake and then still had a major attitude because I pointed out that he had given me the incorrect change. Many people do not understand us of Anabaptist origins. They romanticize the Amish, they act like they are somehow holier than thou, etc. etc. The Amish themselves realize how human they are. We are descendants of the most radical wing of the Reformation. Only once you are an adult and are able to choose for yourself are you expected to "join church" and take that baptismal vow. The Amish take that promise perhaps too strongly. My own parents suggested that "you join our church because you are living with us now, but when you move away from home feel free to join another church." Perhaps the most moving part of the movie to me is when Faron takes out the Ausbund, the oldest Protestant hymnbook in continuous use and talks about the people from the 16th century being able to die for their faith. In spite of talking like a street hoodlum, Faron respects the deep conviction that our Anabaptist foreparents had in being willing to die for their faith. He says "those people were willing to die for their faith, man I don't know if I could do that." I am somewhat passionate in my defense of the Amish faith. The movie represents that ALL young people go through this phase. However, not all are as rebellious as these young people. Many remain at home and eventually join the church of their parents without being too wild. Some gatherings are hymnsings and not wild beer, drug induced orgies. The filmmaker of course would not have been able to interview such young people, because they would not allow themselves to be interviewed. This film is to be commended for its documentation of young Amish persons who are going through a rite of passage. The human spirit remains bouyant and almost 90% rejoin the church of their parents. Remaining in the Amish community has been likened by some in choosing to join a religious order. There is safety, contentment and acceptance for you if you follow the Ordnung. If anyone has further questions, feel free to email me at the address listed here.
Rating:
Summary: XAmish.com - I was Amish and I know some Old Order Amish
Review: I was Amish and I know some Old Order Amish people. I was a Swartzentruber Amish, a more strict Amish sect then the Old Order. In face the SA are a brake-off of the OOA years ago. I work for a house builder crew, owned by OOA brothers. I have discussed the movie with my boss, Allen, and he said that he knows that a lot of things happen in the OOA youth groups that should not. The New Order Amish have hardly any such problem as the ones in the movie. The NOA are a more closly knit group then either the SA or OOA. The SA on the other hand do not allow their teens to experince any of these things in this movie. When I was 10-14 I was sneeking out of the house to go to my "Enlish" brother's [now a Srg. in Iraq] house to watch TV. But I personaly never had the beer parties that were in the movie, exept for about 2 weeks when my parents where away to sell our old house, 20-30 miles away! But as far as the OOA go, yes the movie is vary real. But keep in mind that not all Amish are like the ones in the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: The Dark Side of the Simple Life
Review: I watched this DVD twice, being especially taken with the heartbreaking story of the main narrator, Faron, a minister's son, struggling with the destination of his soul. He has been taught that he will go to hell unless he lives and dies in the Amish church, but the pull of the world proves very seductive. Faron's buddy Gerald expresses the same nihilistic attitude--he's pretty sure he's going to hell, but that seems a long way off when beer, drugs & skater punk fashions are beckoning. Also memorable is Velda, a young woman who does the unthinkable by leaving the church after being baptized and breaking off a wedding. Disowned by her family & all her former community, she is successfully building a life for herself that includes a job & college. Her courage is remarkable. I was amazed to learn that these Amish young people, when dressed "English" are virtually indistinguishable from other American teens--how do they pick up the vernacular of the street with no access to TV, movies, popular music or other non-Amish kids? How do the boys obtain money for cars & driving lessons? Where do all the beer & cigarettes & drugs come from? They take to the activities that regular teens grow up doing like ducks to water, leading me to believe that the Amish are not as 'separate' as their elders would like to believe. The Amish boys portrayed in this film are leading a wild partying lifestyle that most of their 'English' peers can only dream of.
This film will surprise, and shock you. Definitely worth viewing.
Rating: 
Summary: Amish Demystification
Review: If all you know about the Amish comes from seeing the movie "Witness" or passing the occasional buggy by the side of the road, many of the images in Lucy Walker's understated documentary will be jarring. Girls in 19th century dresses chug beer from plastic cups, a small-time Amish crank dealer hides his stash inside a matchbox, and teenagers dance at a raucous party that, apart from the white bonnets dotting the crowd, could be happening anywhere. The great achievement of Walker's film is to show how this is all less incongruous than it seems. When Amish teenagers turn sixteen they are encouraged to leave their communities and experience the pleasures and conveniences of life in the outside "English" world. This period is called Rumspringa (literally "running around") and is intended to ensure that the Amish who come back into the fold will have made a conscious choice to do so. The appeal to free will is well-intentioned, but ultimately disingenuous. When given their first taste of adult freedom, Amish teenagers do what any other teenagers do: they drink too much, have sex, and spend a lot of time driving around in cars. For most teenagers this is just a phase. For the Amish it's the preliminary to the most important decision of their life: whether or not to join the Amish church. The subjects of Walker's documentary are no better prepared for the trials of adolescence than any other group of sixteen year olds, and it comes as no surprise that most of them, after a few tumultuous years, seem ready to return to a way of life that represents family, security, and a rock-solid sense of identity. Rumspringa, an Amish elder says at one point, is really a vaccination. You get just enough of a taste of the outside world so that when you give it up you won't wonder what you're missing. His candor is winning, as is the level-headedness of most of the Amish elders Walker interviews. Her main subjects are the kids, but they are in many ways like deeply religious small-town kids anywhere: confused and self-obsessed, but basically decent, and given to projecting a theological dimension onto the normal pains of growing up. Beneath the strange clothing is a familiar conflict between piety and hell-raising. It's in the interviews with Amish adults that the most intriguing aspects of Amish society are revealed. Despite the horse-and-buggy trappings, the Amish are not opposed to technology per se, just technology that they consider disruptive to their way of life. So cars and televisions are out, but a solar-powered battery charger is fine. (You can imagine a hippie commune reaching a similar conclusion after much earnest debate.) Their attitude towards sex, while hardly permissive, is surprisingly laid-back and pragmatic: a little premarital fooling around can be overlooked as long as it leads to an Amish marriage and Amish children. The adults interviewed for this film come across as relaxed and candid, and have none of the prickly self-righteousness you find in other religious conservatives. Their condemnations of the outside world are rote, without any real heat. It appears that in choosing never to engage the modern world, either as participants or evangelicals, they feel little need to either judge it or defend themselves. In their inwardness, the Amish seem more like Hasidic Jews than Christian fundamentalists. But Hassids still drive cars. Despite their conviction, you still come away wondering how long the Amish way of life can last. In one telling interview, a preacher bemoans the way work has changed. Fifty years ago, he says, Amish children would have stayed home and helped out on the farm. Now they go to work in a factory, get some money, and the next thing you know, they want to buy a car. Now here's a battle that started back when everyone drove a horse and buggy. For family ties and religious values to overwhelm teenage rebellion is the easy part. The hard part comes when an agrarian way of life squares off against factory jobs and pocket money.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie - but don't put all Amish in one basket
Review: Please note that the rites of passage chronicled in this movie apply to the Old Order Amish, but not the other 'plain churches'. For example, the Beachy Amish are free to own cars, use electricity and are often PC experts, but shun immodest clothing, plus radio and live TV because of the frequent negative input from these media. As a result, the Beachy young people do not go through these regrettable experiments in the modern world, and thus they do not risk losing both their faith and culture.
Rating: 
Summary: Good concept. Bad filmmaking.
Review: The concept of "Rumspringa," in which some of the world's most conservative people run wilder than most of us ever do, is fascinating. Then why is _Devil's Playground_ so boring?
The beginning is amazing, when we get our first glimpse at the debauchery of an Amish youth party.
The rest of the film, unfortunately, is pure tedium, as the filmmakers focus on a few kids who stray rather far into drugs and other vices, but who just aren't very interesting.
One in particular, a crystal meth dealer and user, gets endless attention, and we just see him ramble about nothing much for minute after minute. The fact that he was formerly Amish does not make his pathetic life much more interesting than that of the next white trash loser.
Another Amish drop-out is a girl who appears to have serious emotional problems and who decides to go to college. That is all I learned about her in the movie, and it could have been conveyed in about 30 to 60 seconds. Instead, the director goes back to the girl again and again to pad out the film's running time, even though she has nothing additional to tell us.
Meanwhile, we are not given much context for any of this. Do most Amish kids stray this far before coming back? Do some not stray at all? Do the adults really just sit idly by for all of it? After seeing this movie, I have no idea--I just know about a few kids who fell pretty far from the tree, and who aren't very interesting in themselves.
I was struck by the fact that many of the people shown did not appear to share the ethnic background of the majority of Amish and Mennonite people I've encountered (and I've seen quite a few). It is also clear that some of the Amish people we see, including the adults who allowed themselves to be interviewed on camera, are from different Amish sects. So does this stuff go on among all the Amish, or just in some weird group of Amish, or what? The film never explains.
Other things irritate, such as use of the same soundtrack music over and over. Why the filmmaker thought the electronic music of Aphex Twin was the best choice to represent the "unplugged" world of the Amish, I don't know.
The footage in this film could have been used to make an interesting 15-minute news magazine segment. It does not work as a (barely) feature length documentary.
Rating:
Summary: Rare look into a closed society--surprising
Review: The conservative Amish eschew electricity and automobiles, and you can see them parked at our local Big-Discount-Mart in their buggies. The Amish community is close-knit and you'd never guess that their teenagers could be running around, drinking, throwing monsterous parties and getting strung out on drugs. But during "rumspringa" or "running around", sixteen-year old boys and girls are allowed to do what they want. The theory is that once they've tasted the worldly things, they will either decide to settle down, or leave for good. As joining the church is a lifelong committment, it's better to figure out beforehand whether life in the community is better than out in the world. The story of Faron, Gerald, Velda and the others is fascinating. You think "these kids are never going to get it together" but it's amazing how they change. Faron gets in serious drug trouble, Velda is clinically depressed but tried to fit in. The story of how the Amish handle their youth is surprising. This is a rare look at a closed community who normally avoid being photographed, let alone filmed.
Rating:
Summary: Walking on the wild side.
Review: The documentary "Devil's Playground" examines the phenomenon of the "Rumspringa"--the 5 year period beginning at age 16 when every Amish teenager is given the opportunity to consider joining the Amish church. The documentary follows the Rumspringa period of Amish teens--male and female--and interviews several as they make their decisions. Amish children only attend school (an Amish one-room school) until the eighth grade, and then leave school behind and begin working--usually in a family-owned business. The Amish live without electricity, and cars. This means they have no television, and no video games. During the Rumspringa period, Amish youth are free to drive, drink, take drugs, have sex, etc. According to the documentary, male Amish teens typically leave the traditional Amish clothing behind while girls usually do not. I'd never heard of Rumspringa before this documentary, and quite frankly, I was amazed by this film. I knew the Amish withdrew from society, and I just assumed that the teenagers either joined or wandered off, but I was not prepared to see a trailer full of Amish teens drugged up to their eyeballs right on Amish land. The Amish Rumspringa teens careen around and throw such wild parties that people come from all over America to attend. Apparently, it is well known (except by me) that "Amish kids have the best parties." And the documentary makers questioned partygoers at one event, and, yes, there was indeed a fair representation of the various states in attendance. The son of an Amish preacher, Faron, is one of the teens at the centre of this documentary. He lives in a trailer with his friends and tries to support his $100 a day Meth habit. Most of the teens interviewed are vastly enjoying their Rumspringa period, and accept the fact that they will go back to the Amish way of life in time. Several try to break away entirely, but one Amish girl who says she won't join just moves to yet another Amish community. With little education, these teens are ill-prepared for the world, and it seems just a matter of time before they give up and accept baptism. According to the documentary, 90% of Amish teens return to the fold. I'm going to make special mention here of Velda--she came across a remarkably strong young girl who honestly has me cheering for her. On the negative side, I wish the film had included a few more details. Given that Amish live such a strict life, how do they tolerate the Rumspringa period? How do they tolerate teens drinking, smoking, having sex, taking drugs etc while living under their roofs? In one scene, Faron drags a battery into the house to hook up a video game--how does the religious, rule-abiding part of the family cope with this? Where do the cars come from? How did the Amish kids in the trailer afford to live? Also, how has Rumspringa changed from, let's say the 17th Century? Overall, the fascinating film was well-worth watching--displacedhuman.
Rating:
Summary: Dig Deeper Into the Films Options......
Review: THE MOVIE WAS GOOD, IT REALLY REMINDS ME OF CHRIS SMITH'S DOCUMENTARY:
"AMERICAN MOVIE" IN THE WAY IT WAS FILMED. THEY SHOT OVER 300 HOURS OF FILM
AND DIGITAL, EDITED IT DOWN FOR A CHANNEL 4 FEATURE AND THIS FULL LENGTH FILM.
THE UNFORTUNATE ASPECT OF THIS FILM IS THEY DO INFORM THE "LAYMAN" ABOUT THE
CULTURE - OR DARE I SAY, "SUB-CULTURE" THAT IS THE AMISH, BUT THEY REALLY LEAVE
ALOT OF QUESTIONS ONE WOULD HAVE UNANSWERED. THE MOVIE WAS INTERESTING
ENOUGH TO WANT TO WATCH THE COMMENTARY, AND I'M GLAD I DID - FOR IT REVEALED
ALOT OF ANSWERS TO THE GAPS OF THE FILM. I ALSO VENTURED INTO THE DELETED SCENES
ONLY TO FIND WHAT MOST EDITORS DO, THEY CUT VERY INFORMATIVE SCENES, I JUST WISH
THAT ALL DIRECTORS ALSO EDITED THEIR FILMS. IF YOU WANT TO LEARN ABOUT AMISH LIVING
WATCH THE MOVIE, IF YOU WANT TO LEARN ABOUT AMISH CULTURE, LISTEN TO THE COMMENTARY
AND VIEW THE 3 DELETED SCENES.
Rating:
Summary: it's all voodoo in every religion
Review: The one thing absent from the Rumspringa documentary is someone telling any of these Amish teens that Religion is nonsense, Jesus was a man, it's all voodoo in every religion and any normal family would accept you no matter what your beliefs. All these kids get is an inappropriate amount of t-ts and beer and that is not what freedom or free choice is about. Someone should have dumped a truckload of science, philosophy, and evolution books on them and given them access to the internet with a T3 line. .... Most normal American kids don't get tossed out into the world that way and if I had, well then I would have come home too, no matter what was out there.
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