Since the mid-'60s, Chicago-based collective Kartemquin Films has specialized in socially and politically progressive documentaries, including 1994's Hoop Dreams, a remarkable film that spanned four years in the lives of two high-school basketball prospects. Over the course of three hours, their interwoven stories revealed a wealth of insight on racial and class issues, education, family, opportunity, and the long odds on the American dream. Kartemquin's latest production, Maria Finitzo's 5 Girls, is considerably narrower in ambition and scope, but shows the same faith in teasing out broad social observations through compassionate portraiture. The major difference between the two films is that Finitzo's subjects are an arbitrarily diverse selection of adolescent girls from varying racial and economic backgrounds, with only the most tenuous thematic connection. In Hoop Dreams, the fortunes of Arthur Agee and William Gates dovetailed in more meaningful ways because they were working toward a common goal simultaneously. But the bright young women in 5 Girls are welded together without much purpose, other than to make the obvious point that kids today are not always like the amoral, sex-obsessed burnouts in Larry Clark movies. For two years, Finitzo followed five girls between the ages of 13 and 17, each from varied economic backgrounds in Chicago and its suburbs. Haibinh and her family left Vietnam 10 years ago to pursue greater educational opportunities in America, but as well as she's adjusted to a new culture, she feels an insistent desire to return home. Deemed an outcast in high school for her politics and sexual orientation, Corrie gets support from her single mother, but her estranged father, a devout Christian, answers her bisexuality with moral high-handedness. Also a child of divorce, Aisha's early attempts at dating and high-school basketball are monitored by her caring but domineering father. Amber, a fine student with strong college prospects, threatens to throw her future away by marrying Antoine, a 20-year-old former drug dealer on house arrest. The least troubled of the five, Toby is a privileged suburbanite who's full of energy and involved in language courses, music lessons, cross-country, and other activities. Each girl is worthy of examination, but taken together, their individual stories seem cursory and underdeveloped, like five short films haphazardly cobbled together. The problem is mostly conceptual: Finitzo has chosen her subjects with diversity as the sole criterion, without any thought to how they might connect in the editing room. For all the revealing, truthful, and sensitive observation in 5 Girls, there's just not enough footage to go around.