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Brad Renfro,
Brad Renfro,
Rachel Miner,
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Larry Clark,
Larry Clark
see all cast/crew...
: Lions Gate
: Drama
: 115 min.
: English
: English, Spanish
see additional details...
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Photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark, who made a controversial feature debut with the disturbing drama Kids, returns with another disquieting look at amoral and sexually precocious youth. Bobby (Nick Stahl) is a high school student growing up in southern Florida in the early '90s. Bobby is also a borderline psychotic; he frequently lashes out with brutal violence against those around him and especially enjoys humiliating his best friend Marty (Brad Renfro). While Bobby professes to hate and fear homosexuals, he goads Marty into performing phone sex with men, makes Marty and his friends watch hardcore gay porn films with him, and may have sexually abused Marty. But Marty is hardly the only victim of Bobby's abuse; Bobby has sexually assaulted Marty's girlfriend Lisa (Rachel Miner) and more than once has barged in on the couple while they were making love. Lisa's best friend Ali (Bijou Phillips) has also been raped by Bobby, and he has mistreated nearly everyone in their circle of friends. One night, Marty, Lisa, Ali, and several others decide Bobby's cycle of abuse must stop. But their solution is as ugly as the problem -- the teens stab Bobby, slit his throat, crush his head with a baseball bat, and throw his body into the bay, where the remains will be eaten by alligators. Bully is based on a book by journalist Jim Schutze, which recounted the facts of the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent, who after years of abusing his friends and classmates, was killed by seven of his acquaintances in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. As with Kids, Larry Clark's startlingly graphic depiction of sex, violence, and drug use among teenagers crossed the boundaries of what the MPAA could permit in an R-rated film, and the picture's distributors chose to release the film without a rating. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Special Features:
- Cast & Crew Interviews
- Trailer
- Music Only Track
You might also enjoy:
Kids
Clark's first feature is equally disturbing, memorable
Rivers Edge
Complex cult film is chock full of teenage nihilism
Another Day in Paradise
Melanie Griffith shines in Clark's second film about a drug-addicted "family" on a crime spree; fun for the whole "family"
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| Showgirls 2: the decline of teenage civilization
by rarcher
December 1, 2003 - 6:34 PM PST
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7 out of 9 members found this review helpful
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Larry Clark is overenamored of Bad Kids - kids who screw, sleep around, and occasionally commit homicide. So this tale of suburban delinquency was no doubt attractive to him. Unfortunately, he's so concerned with trying to freak us out or titillate us with the sex, drugs, and violence that he forgets to make us care.
The titular "bully" comes off as only slightly more repulsive than the rest of the characters. We can't side with him, we can't side with his enemies, and we can't even side with their parents, who have deluded themselves into thinking that their little darlings are driving a sober 65 in their 5.0s. What this movie needed was a strong character sitting in judgement over all the bullshit. Instead, all we get is extremely gratuitous nudity, as if Clark hopes that's the Band-Aid that'll hold this film together.
It seems that some of Clark's actors had better instincts than their director. Several of them turn in pitch-perfect portrayals of idiot dopers and mulleted Mortal Kombaters. If Clark had chosen to put the focus there, rather than on the T and A, he might have had a movie worth checking out.
Remember how, despite all the nudity and sex, Showgirls was boring as hell? Welcome to the sequel. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 6.55)
146 Votes
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