BULLY *** (out of four) starring Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Michael Pitt screenplay by Zachary Long & Roger Pullis, based on the book by Jim Schutze directed by Larry Clark
-a review by Bill Chambers | bill@filmfreakcentral.net
***For more film, DVD and books about movie reviews, plus annual coverage of The Toronto International Film Festival, visit _Film Freak Central_ - http://filmfreakcentral.net | Now with search engine***
An authority figure speaks the defining line of dialogue in _Bully_, Larry Clark's quasi-sequel to his own hotly contested _Kids_ "I don't know what you're up to. I don't think I want to know." Often accused, even with only three motion pictures under his belt, of over-sensationalizing already sensationalistic material, Clark is hardly the next Oliver Stone; he is something of an interfering observer, but not a conspiracy proselytizer running with scissors down the hallway. Where Stone drew slave parallels to football in _Any Given Sunday_ by intercutting clips from _Ben-Hur_, Clark makes more organic shock statements. He can be tactless, sure. Can't we all?
The scene from _Bully_ that's causing a ruckus features the flip single mother played by Bijou Phillips on the phone in a salon while getting a pedicure. As her conversation winds down, we get a leering close-up of her crotch. As the vantage point of the pedicurist, it's not an entirely illogical insert, and with Phillips sitting there spread-eagle, the shot has overtones of the hetero male audience's telepathic projection. If Larry Clark were younger (he's 58), cleaner (he spent a lot of the post-production time on his _Another Day in Paradise_ in rehab), and not a professional voyeur of teenagers (numerous acclaimed photo essays about the youth scene got him a movie career), _Bully_ would've turned out different, but do his age and experiences mean he's a dirty old man or on to us and exposing our hypocritical indignation? If hatchling _American Pie_ directors the Weitz brothers were Clark's age, they probably still would've emerged unscathed from showing Shannon Elizabeth nude for the duration of a genre-cushioned sequence that is, I dare say, less forgivable than _Bully_ at its most button-pushing. Think about it a guy asks a girl (Elizabeth) whose English isn't so good over to his house and, knowing that she'll need to change clothing once there, surreptitiously videotapes her getting undressed and enables his friends to watch via the Internet--and we're cued to laugh.
What continues to appal me about _Bully_ is but a by-product of the film its raw depiction of sex has overshadowed an incendiary act of violence around which everything else orbits. That I am forced to address a glimpse of pubic hair ahead of manslaughter officially confirms the reversal of western society's hedonistic poles, and casts a doubtful shadow over my own sexually curious teen years. I encountered no more over-the-top knee-jerk reaction than these odious reader comments that Dave Poland published last Wednesday
"'_Bully_' is perverted for no reason I could figure out except to satisfy Mr. Clark's old man obsession with young people's bodies. He seems to leer on the actors for no reason at all and even the younger, often shirtless, boys like Marty's brother came across as victims of some kind of unseemly voyeurism and I felt dirty for being a part of it. I'm about as far away from being a prude as you can [sic] but this movie just felt wrong."
_Bully_ takes place in Florida, in the middle of summer. To this self-declared non-prude (David nicknamed him "Not Fester") I ask, what would a boy who is anything but shirtless be doing in Florida on a hot summer's day? Because DVD commentary on _Another Day in Paradise_ indicates that Steven Spielberg is the bane of Clark's existence, I wonder how squirmy the idiotic Not Fester got when a gaggle of half-naked pre-adolescents ogled Haley Joel Osment in Spielberg's recent A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Not Fester's common alloy of anatomical shame and political paranoia will soon castrate artistic expression altogether.
Based on a true story, though muted, in some way, by homogenizing the races of the actual participants, _Bully_ stars the alluring Seth Green-David Spade fusion Nick Stahl in the title role as the abusive, college-bound best friend of spacey surfer Marty (the frequently touching Brad Renfro, a co-producer). Marty's girlfriend, Lisa (ex-Macaulay Culkin Rachel Miner), grows tired of the perennially looming black cloud that is Stahl's Bobby and rallies the troops to kill him; she's also pregnant with either Marty or Bobby's child (the latter would be by rape), and seems to believe that Bobby's death would rule him out as the biological father. The protagonists' relentless, veracious witlessness is hopefully more unsettling than the film's explicit nature; in the case of the stoners, we sense a façade, and wonder if they ever inhale. (Michael Pitt's performance is one rife with subtext in that regard, but also so off-putting as to discourage repeat viewings.) Like Clark's _Kids_, the crackling conversation piece _Bully_ will serve parents better than it does their offspring because one can't see the forest through the trees. Have I mentioned that Bobby, however repellent, is the film's most sympathetic character? Go with an open mind.
© Film Freak Central (http://filmfreakcentral.net/). This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
========== X-RAMR-ID: 29001 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 240198 X-RT-TitleID: 1108900 X-RT-SourceID: 559 X-RT-AuthorID: 1375 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews