It doesn't pull punches or try to paint a more palatable picture, director Lee Hirsch delivering his saga of kid-on-kid brutality with a didactic verisimilitude that's decidedly chilling.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 14, 2012

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 13, 2012

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.

| Apr 13, 2012

Your heart hurts for these kids, and the blood boils, too, at irrefutable evidence that these children are not safe in their schools.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 13, 2012

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?

| Original Score: B | Apr 13, 2012

"Bully" is a good start to a necessary conversation, but its loving voice is likely to be drowned out by haters who hide their own wounded hearts behind Internet pseudonyms and broadcast microphones.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 13, 2012

I hope all middle schoolers and high schoolers will see this movie -- and parents, teachers, and school administrators, too.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 12, 2012

"Bully" presents so many devastating moments that it's hard to pick the most powerful one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 12, 2012

"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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 12, 2012

A deeply moving but highly selective look at the effects of bullying on children and teenagers.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 12, 2012

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 12, 2012

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 12, 2012

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

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 12, 2012

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 12, 2012

It presents a dramatic case for creating supportive communities that will stand up to those being bullied in the world. Now the onus is on all of us to play our part in making it happen.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 11, 2012

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

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 6, 2012

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 5, 2012

What Bully does is offer viewers the potential to connect a growing network of like-minded people, and does so with elegant storytelling.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 1, 2012

This is the kind of subject matter that can be enraging or moving in the hands of the right director, but Hirsch fails to connect with either the heart or the head.

| Mar 30, 2012

The best social documents on film do more than show you what's wrong in the world - they make it personal. Bully does that with a passion.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 30, 2012