BULLY

A sensitive topic, touching story, and real-life elements: generally, mix them up, and you have a winner. In the case of Bully though, it falls just short, riding in a semi-confused state of half-documentary/half-drama, trying to woo both the audiences and failing to cover the issue in its entirety. Directed by Lee Hirsch and ridiculing the ‘boys will be boys’ attitude of the authorities towards bullying, the documentary revolves around the harassed lives of five American schoolkids. While Bully tells the unfortunate truth, laced with hard-hitting themes of agony, despair, grief, frustration, anguish, rejection by peers and desperation to make friends, it doesn’t provide a way out or a moral lesson for either parties, the bully or the bullied. Bully is nonetheless vivid, heartwarming and almost impressive. ***

Written by Joseph Rana