Bully: Critic Reviews

This is an urgent and moral movie; there shouldn't be a puritanical roadblock standing between it and its audience.

"Bully" forces you to confront not the cruelty of specific children - who have their own problems, and their good sides as well - but rather the extent to which that cruelty is embedded in our schools and therefore in our society as a whole.

An insightful and moving documentary.

"Bully" doesn't need research or great filmmaking or narrative focus, per se. It needs only the shaming power of its relentlessness and a young audience open to sharing in that shame.

It has a clear and calm approach to storytelling and some interest in the quality of its handheld images.

Should be considered required viewing for every parent, teacher and teenager in America.

What "Bully" says about our species is dismaying, if unsurprising ... What it says about some educators in positions of power is troubling.

Bully" is smart and compassionate about the pain of its wounded subjects and the frustration felt by their parents, seemingly abandoned by the system. What the powerful film lacks is insight into bullying.

It is hard to not respect anything that asks us to respect the stories of the dead, and asks us how we might help the living.

Bully is repetitive and not especially artful, but children who allow themselves to see the world through the eyes of the film's victims will never be the same.

[The directors] avoid charts and graphs, talking heads and sociology. Their approach is more direct and, perhaps, more effective.

We feel sympathy for the victims, and their parents or friends, but the film helplessly seems to treat bullying as a problem without a solution.

The best Hirsch's film can do, in the end, is remind us that bullying means more than we admit, and its effects aren't always immediately clear, even to loved ones.

Hirsch seldom gets face time with any bullies or their parents, and he tends to ignore the complicated social and psychological patterns that feed the problem.

Bully is less a checklist plan for eliminating abusive behavior than an emotionally powerful wake-up call for a society too long in denial.

It would have been nice if the film had reflected its title a bit more and looked at the bullies themselves - what drives one kid to torture another? Is it a reaction to home life, is it fear, is it innate awfulness?

Heartbreaking as these stories are, "Bully" is too narrow in scope to be anything approaching definitive. Most notably absent from the film are the bullies themselves.

Lee Hirsch is certainly one who is making a difference. I endorse him and his brave, powerful movie and urge you to see it for yourself. You might leave Bully with rage, but you will not leave Bully with indifference.

It follows, over the course of a year, five sobering case histories of unrelenting schoolyard persecution.

A powerful piece of work that might make a difference if enough people see it.

Hirsch's documentary truly shocks by the two sets of outrageous bureaucrats it exposes: one cowers on-screen, and the other hides in the offices of the MPAA, America's movie censor.

Bully doesn't offer solutions, it raises awareness, and does so remarkably well.

Tackles this headline-heavy topic by mixing moments of raw emotional power with intervals of somewhat suspect manipulation.

Bully is sufficiently powerful to impact a viewer regardless of age, but this should be mandatory viewing for kids between 10 and 17.