A Girl Like Her (2015)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Best movie of this year hands down!

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Well the reason people bully isn't always the same. It isn't always because they have a hard life. But sometimes it is and so this movie took this bullying reason. It is actually a great movie to show teenagers and have a conversation about.I really like thew style of the movie. It being filmed as if it is a documentary makes this movie feel much more realistic which is great. Acting is pretty good as well. I think the only time it felt fake was when the victim cried about being bullied. But this most likely wasn't because of her acting but because the lines were a bit overdramatic which was unfortunate. Because otherwise the movie was awesome. I like the participation of everyone, friends, people who kind of knew them, family members etc.

A practical production team made an exploitation movie waiting for some fascist white parents who need to make a display of how much they do for their precious children to buy.It is a movie made by adults for adults, all playing the caring game. The story is dull. The acting is to the assumed level of low budged educational movie. The editing is also unpleasant as it is the waving camera, and I don't mean the hidden camera.Expect to go past half time before the hidden camera footage starts showing.And this run for profits won't make any good. There is nothing for the teens about how to get out. There is nothing for the adults about how to talk with the teens. There is nothing for the state employees of how to help. At best, groups of hysterical individuals will just add even more absurd rules that would make the life in the mandatory school system even harder to bear. And because of the extra pressure, the teens will be lashing out even worse.And, like the writes and producers, nobody will ever care about the actual people. Because on screen there are no people. Only cardboard cutouts for the archetypes that the adults have met. Why is any of them doing any of the things? Everything is open so the emotional crowd would fill in the gaps. Why the attractive girl is doing that? 1. Because is beautiful. And 2. Because ... and the loser white middle class parents will fill in their story of well fed misery.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

Amazing movie with amazing message. This movie has an easy, somber tone that makes you truly feel for the protagonist, her best friend, her parents, and even the background children who are feeling sorry for her. It goes without basic highschool movie tropes, and the actual bullying feels genuine instead of something that came straight out of an anime antagonist (example: "You dare bump into ME!? The most popular girl in school!?!" Absolutely none of that. I was pleasantly surprised.)What I also liked about it is it touched on how adults as well react to it rather than chocking it up to it being the victims entire fault; it shows varying viewpoints of teachers decidedly not reporting it because they believe bullying is impossible to combat, or parents so belligerent on defending their own child they'll go along with the bullying.The only thing I disagree with is that the film largely focused on sympathy for the bully (without taking away from the actual victim, mind you). It gave this entire message about how abusive people have had hard lives, thus we should feel sympathy when they abuse other people. "Maybe she doesn't hate you, maybe she hates herself!" I'm not saying that it's IMPOSSIBLE for bullies to have had hard lives, or that I don't feel for them/they deserve it, but I feel it's generally irrelevant. A lot of people in the world have had hard lives, have been through horrible hardships, have been traumatized in a million different ways--and still don't go around telling people to "fucking kill themselves". I know exactly what it's like to be both abused and bullied, but do I feel this uncontrollable urge to hurt other people? Uh, no. Bad people know EXACTLY what they're doing and are capable of self-control. Abuse does not justify more abuse, no "but's" about it.All in all a powerful movie with a powerful message, and truly thought-provoking substance about the victim, the bully's, and the bystanders point of view on this subject, but I wouldn't go showing any school's this. It's great at showing how real bullying is and the effect it has on other people, but portray's a harmful stereotype that being hurt makes it okay to hurt. Being an adult means I can distinguish this and make up my own mind about how I feel about that, but I'd hate for impressionable kids to be told that they outta be considerate of their bullies poor feelings.

...would work better if it didn't try so hard. Ostensibly based on a true-life case, neophyte auteur Amy S. Weber's screenplay suffers from a heavy-handed and overly simplistic message: bullying is bad (no kidding!), which it then betrays with an unusual sympathy for the devil--sorry, I mean bully. Simply put, it's a twist that doesn't pay off with any great satisfaction, falling just short of shooting the film right in the foot. I can understand the impulse to humanize the antagonist, but it's just not handled in a way that respects the victim, at least in my opinion.The acting's good from an ensemble of relative unknowns, led by Hunter "The Young and the Restless" King and Lexi "General Hospital" Ainsworth, with notable support from the likes of Jimmy "Star Trek (2009)" Bennett and tyro Christy Engle. Obviously, Ms. Weber casts well and handles actors with aplomb, but the storytelling still leaves much to be desired.If the subject matter interests you, then "A Girl Like Her" is worth a watch. Otherwise, you can safely give this one a pass.