Bully [HD]

"Bully" is a must-see for any and all kids age 10 and up
Not sure why Amazon lists this as "The Bully Project", but we are talking indeed about the documentary "Bully", whose initial R rating by the MPAA Caused such an outcry (more on that later).

"Bully" (90 min.) is the self-explanatory title of this documentary, directed by Lee Hirsch (who he himself was a victim of bullying when growing up, reason for wanting to make this film). The movie basically follows 5 students in schools in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma as they deal with bullying in an almost daily basis, some with tragic results. There is a lot of footage from school buses, which appears to be ground zero for bullying. I assume Hirsch was able to mount some cameras in the bus unbeknowst to the kids. What we see is sometimes shocking. In the case of 12 yr. old Alex, the bullying becomes so violent that in the middle of the movie, we are informed that the film producers were so concerned with Alex's safety that they decided to share the school bus...

Everyone should see it, but not everyone will
My mom recently gave me a bag of papers, report cards and mementos from my school days. She meant it to be a nice thing for me to have in adulthood to remember my school days. People who want me to put the past behind me seem to also be the same people who won't let me forget it. I had to stuff that bag in the closet. I can't look at it without crying. Why were they so mean to me? Why was I such a bad person? Why did they hate me so much? I graduated high school in 1989, and the bullying I endured still hurts.

If you're an adult survivor of the kind of heinous treatment the kids in this movie endure, it may trigger a PTSD episode. If it never happened to you, you will be absolutely stunned at what goes on. They don't sugar-coat anything. Some of the footage is raw and disturbing. These kids know that the cameras are there; they've been recorded since before they were born. They know they are being watched, and they still behave like animals. It makes you really wonder what...

Powerful and Disturbing
BULLY is a powerful, disturbing documentary feature from director Lee Hirsch that sparked a national movement that rallied people to stand up to school bullying, hate and intolerance.

This is a difficult film to watch, as the camera captures the emotionally painful lives of five families whose children were victims of school bullying. Two of the kids committed suicide, while another in a desperate effort to get her fellow students to leave her alone, threatened then with a gun and wound up in jail.

However, what is truly distressing about BULLY is the "kids will be kids" and "there's not really much that we can do" attitude of the idiotic school administrators and local police who seem to prefer to ignore the issue.

Perhaps if officials like these had addressed the bullying problems in their school, a tragedy like Columbine would not have occurred.

BULLY is not "entertainment," but it is a film that every kid, parent and school official...

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