Main cast: Brad Renfro (Marty Puccio), Rachel Miner (Lisa Connelly), Nick Stahl (Bobby Kent), Bijou Phillips (Ali Willis), Michael Pitt (Donny Semenec), Kelli Garner (Heather Swaller), Daniel Franzese (Derek Dzvirko), and Leo Fitzpatrick (The Hitman)
Director: Larry Clark
Larry Clark is a freaking pervert, and worse, he is a lousy storyteller posing as a high-falutin artist. Bully is an awful movie that is nothing more than an excuse to get all excited over young pretty people getting raped and roughed up. And if you’re a frustrated pervert who just hate those pretty kids Larry Clark teases you with on screen, don’t worry – those kids are punished for turning you on.
So grab your popcorn and that bottle of Vaseline and enjoy.
Bully is all about a bunch of moron kids having sex, prancing full-frontal naked on the camera (sorry, but the girls are the ones doing this prancing, not the guys – stuff a cucumber up Clark’s arse for enforcing this double standard, at least he could have given me a shot of naked Brad Renfro or something), having more sex, getting raped, raping, taking drugs, having more sex, and oh yeah, plotting to murder Bobby. Bobby’s a rapist, closet “fag”, and all-time fiend.
But is there a point to all this? What is Bully anyway? A dark comedy about murder? A testament to the fragility of youths? It sends so many confusing messages. On the first half, Mr Clark seems to either wants to fuck his actors and actresses or be one of them, having the camerawork lingering on bare young teen flesh like a sick voyeur. Then after the brutal murder, he decides to ridicule them in so cruel a manner that I have to wince. This movie veers from perverted voyeurism to brutal cruelty like a sex fiend denied his or her release bent on violence.
To be fair, the young cast gives a valiant performance, and they display emotional range that can be moving if Bully knows what it wants to be. Larry Clark seems torn between wanting to aim for his viewers’ crotch or head, and ends up insulting everyone’s intelligence instead.
