BULLY (2012)

BULLY is a sometimes informative documentary about bullying in the public schools across the United States. This has become a hot topic in America, but, like this movie, liberals and leftists are generating hysteria about the subject to promote homosexual, transgender lifestyles among impressionable children and teenagers.

The movie consists of interviews with a couple of parents whose children have committed suicide because they were bullied at school. The camera also follows several young teenagers who are having problems with bullies. In fact, the camera captures some bullies physically harassing one middle school student on his bus. The filmmakers bring the bullying tapes to the parents and school officials, but school officials, especially one assistant principal, clearly try to evade the problem.

BULLY is too episodic to be truly engaging. The main problem with the documentary is that one teenager featured in it is a girl who says she’s a lesbian. There are even shots of the girl, who’s rather chubby and deliberately wears clothes and behaves like a boy instead of a girl, holding hands with her skinny “girlfriend” and hanging out with other apparent lesbian teenagers. The girl and her parents complain about being shunned by other students and the local community because of this, but, unlike the other cases in the documentary, there are no examples given of any physical bullying.

All in all, BULLY raises some important issues regarding this topic, but the inclusion of the side issue of homosexuality makes everything a little suspect. In reality, youths aged 15 to 24 have always had a higher suicide rate than other age groups. While it’s true that people who express their homosexual tendencies commit suicide at a higher rate, much of that is because homosexual behavior creates dysfunctional or abnormal relationships in the first place. Finally, depression is the major cause of youth suicide, but bullying is only one factor among many. It doesn’t help matters that America’s public school system has become a system of warehousing and indoctrinating children, rather than educating them. Think how much public schools depress the people actively engaged in the system on a daily basis.

Ultimately, if teenage suicide is a real problem, perhaps it’s because our society, much less our schools, don’t teach the religious, biblical doctrine that committing suicide is a wicked sin, as is bullying. Without a moral and biblical foundation, education is a rather pointless exercise. Also, it should be noted that God in the Old Testament and Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament all condemn homosexual behavior as evil. Society needs to teach this fact instead of promoting the opposite belief.

That said, MOVIEGUIDE® doesn’t think shunning children who have deluded themselves into thinking they’re homosexual, or shunning their parents, is the best way to solve this huge modern problem. Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, teaching the Bible to everyone, and discipling believers through God’s Word are much more effective.

Lastly, there’s a controversy about BULLY receiving an R rating for some rough language. The filmmakers are trying to protest the rating, but why don’t they just bleep out the obscenities and profanities in their movie and get a PG or PG-13 rating?

Because of the homosexual subplot and the foul language, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for BULLY.