Director: Lee Hirsch
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 2.0
Weak investigation into the nature of "bullying" in schools centers around several kids who are mocked, humiliated and ostracized for being different - one young man because he has a "fish face," a girl because she's a lesbian and so forth. Bullying is heinous and cruel, yes, but it's also time-eternal and associated with a fear of people that are "different" and may be difficult to understand - I, for one, will admit to being bullied during my freshman year in high school (I was the shortest kid in class), but I coped with it by systematically getting even with my bullies (mostly by teaming up with their girlfriends to make fun of them): by sophomore year, things had significantly improved for me. As tragic as the suicides are and self-loathing that develops from being bullied can be, this documentary seems to ignore the old adage that if someone hits you, you hit them back - how someone responds to their bullies (without going all Columbine on them or bringing a gun on the bus like the African-American girl did) provides for them an important life lesson. You can show this documentary to countless kids, but trust me - as an educator who has spent way too much time around teenagers - the problem is not going to go away any time soon (particularly with our ultra-conformist American culture). My advice to the bullied (off the record, naturally): steel up those nerves and form your own defense squad.
