When Shove Comes To Push

Bully
Kids Unincorporated
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
NR | 94 min

Mean kids suck.  But what can we do about them and about the kids who are being meaned on by them? Lee Hirsch & Alicia Dwyer‘s Bully documentary doesn’t have the exact answers, and apparently neither do the schools or the community at large, but what it does have is a deeply moving and beautifully crafted examination of one of the biggest problems facing today’s youth in hallways, playgrounds & school buses across America

While Bully‘s message in wide-ranging, it wisely focuses on a handful of kids by putting their bully-ish problems on eye-opening display/dismay.  One kid has fish-y looking lips (see above photo) and is picked on endlessly for that reason, amongst other things, another is a gay girl growing up in a town where gay doesn’t exist, and another is an African-American girl who was pushed so far that she borrowed her mom’s gun and threatened other students with it (luckily no one got hurt). There are two other kids chronicled, but tragically, their stories are told after the fact by their parents, since they were bullied to the point where they believed that life was no longer worth living (a scene in which one of the parents points out the closet where her son had hung himself is as pretty much as wurst as wurst gets)

These bullied kids can’t defend themselves, and since the schools seem to be at a loss in the helping department (they all lean on the ole ‘kids will be kids’ excuse), it’s pretty much left up to the parents to make a difference.  And a lot of them do, but in most cases, it’s only after tragedy strikes.  Some of the parents aren’t even fully aware that a bully-ish problem even exists for their child.  In the case of the fish-lipped boy, his parents have zero idea at how much gruff their kid goes thru just riding the bus.  At one point it gets so bad that the filmmakers decided to share their footage with his parents and the school.  When we have to have filmmakers blowing whistles in our society, you know we’ve gots bigger issues than juss bullying!!!

moral of the story – our theory goes, if a documentary is released in a movie theater, then it’s probably worth seeing.  Check!  And a new theory – if the Weinstein Bros release a documentary, it’s probably about some burning hot button topic that probably must be seen (or at least they will make you think it is).  Check!  Good for the Bros Weinstein, and for this whole ratings controversy, as it’s bringing well needed attention to a doc that probably otherwise wouldn’t get much attention, other then for people who work for anti-bullying organizations.  If you have kids OR were ever a kid, you should see this.  Spank dog that we no longer have to go thru middle school ever again, let alone ride a school bus.  Too bad zillions of kids have to, YEAR AFTER YEAR!!!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Bully pushes its way into select theaters on Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…