Source Weekly

From Harry Potter to Twilight, from The Hunger Games to the new Marvel's The Avengers and every comic-book movie that has preceded it, adaptations of beloved pop-culture properties face a question that is rarely asked, but pretty much always should be: Do the fans love them because they're great, or simply because they exist?
Fan-thusiasms being what they are, you'd almost never get adherents to cop to the latter, obvious though it may be to those peering, in befuddlement, from the outside. Stories and characters that we encounter at particular times in our lives begin to resonate in ways that are indefensible through conventional means. Yeah, yeah, the editing was jittery, and sure, the narrative bends under the strain of its need to please the true believers. But that's Katniss up there on a screen in three dimensions! Bella and Edward! Professor Snape! The X-Men! What part of that do you not understand?

For weeks, the story surrounding Lee Hirsch's documentary Bully has been about not the movie itself, but about one little letter – the letter “R.” The MPAA initially gave the film an R rating for language, which inspired cries of outrage from the filmmakers, Harvey Weinstein (the film's distributor and master hubbub-creator) and various allies. It was crucial that this film be accessible to teenagers, they insisted, presumably because it was meant for that audience to see.
Except that it's not.
That much is evident from the opening minutes, when the first voice we hear is that of David Long, father of Tyler Long, who committed suicide at the age of 17 after years as the target of chronic bullying. We see happy, giggling home-movie footage of young Tyler, leading into David's narration about the change in Tyler's personality over the years. It's a heartbreaking moment, yet it also conveys a lot about where Bully is aiming: not so much at the everyday experience of American teens, but at the fears of every parent that there but for the grace of God go they. Hirsch (Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony) wants to grab adults by the throat and heartstrings and scare the crap out of them, and mission accomplished.