Bang Bang You're Dead

Lock up your guns and peroxide!

Bang Bang You're Dead
Showtime
October 13, 2002
TV-Movie
DVD
C+

This post-Columbine story, whose title is taken from an actual play (pre-Columbine), here put on by the local high school, does its best to examine the intersection of bullying and gun violence.  At times I found the movie simplistic and cliche-filled.  (There's a scene that I thought at first was a rip-off of the "groups in the cafeteria" scene in Mean Girls, but it's simply that Mean Girls did it later and better.)  And I can't tell how much we're supposed to just see this as one boy's story or extrapolate to the larger issue, because the alternate title that kept popping into my head was Angry Blond Boys.  If there are students of color in this school, I didn't notice them, so racism is not addressed at all.  Additionally, sexual harassment isn't addressed, including that girls usually don't react by shooting their classmates.  Furthermore, there are plot holes or at least gaps in the script by William Mastrosimone, the worst when we go from Trevor averting a shooting to a scene of everyone either performing or watching BBYD.  

Still, I appreciate the sincerity of the attempt, and the film that the police seized (and that Trevor inexplicably did not submit to his supportive teacher rather than the footage that got him expelled) is very well done.  Guy Ferland directed.