MOVIE REVIEW - Bully

You have probably heard of the new documentary, Bully that is in limited release this week.

Bully is the real story of about a half dozen separate different victims of middle, and high school bullying. It also puts the spotlight on their entire families and the various local, and public school systems that seemingly are failing horribly in this era of teen-age bullying. At times this is a very powerful piece of film that goes right to the heart. Then at others, it feels like only the beginning of the conversation. Let's get this out there. Bullying is a big problem today, and no one should attempt to minimize the that trouble is big, out of control, and needs to be addressed.

Even though the subject matter is really topical and tough, sadly this feels like a really big opportunity missed. While focusing only on the victims and their plight, many things jumped out. First, virtually all of the true stories take place in extremely rural areas, or the south. I found that very limiting. And even though clearly that the victims are the central focus, there was really no attempt at all to understand the root cause, or source of this phenomenon.

There was not one word from the "other side." Not to defend bullying of course, but to attempt to at least help us understand why this exists to the degree it does today. I felt that is one of the essential elements of any real documentary. I think many will want to find who these bullies are, and what is their misguided motivation, and the families that harbor them. Also missing was virtually any mention of cyber-bullying which is a gigantic problem facing today's youth. Another opportunity missed.

As in many documentaries, there has to be a scapegoat and there is one here too. They successfully portray the public school administrators in various schools as non-caring, incompetent , and self absorbed adults that are out of touch and really don't care about the trouble. If the attempt was to show the politics, rules, and the fact that they have their hands tied in may of these cases, it failed. They made these people, and two women assistant principals look like total buffoons. Only the film maker knows what the actual intent was.

Bully is certainly not a bad movie, but it only goes as far as the film maker will let it go. And to be fair, maybe the problem is just far too large to explain in a two hour movie, and so there is a pass given. Maybe there will be more up the road to help us all understand the problem in it's entirety. I think they even did the subject a bit of harm at times by failing to completely educate, and to me that is what a documentary does best. It stops one quarter of the way, and though there's nothing wrong with the content in this film, there is much more to be learned and shared.

Bully. A moving experience to be sure, but there is certainly so much more to this story and problem than they give us here.