The Bad Kids

This film is OK in the sense that it offers a look into the lives of less-than-fortunate teens, however it is not at all structured like a documentary, at least from my point of view. It feels to me like it is less of a documentary, and more like a film that just wants to make you feel either depressed or superior to these teens who cannot make ends meet. I watched this film because it was assigned for a school project, which seemed to have been structured in a way that is optimized for a regular documentary, which means that this is really not good for such a project.

This film is composed of sections of students either conversing with the school principal(who I find insufferable), talking to the camera about their problems, and some scenes of the school faculty discussing issues with some of the students.

There is no narration other than the voices of the teens overlayed over other scenes, and so it is pretty hard to tell what is going on in a significant part of the film. For a while I thought Ms. Viland(The principal) was some sort of social worker rather than an administrator, since it was never stated.

So yeah, there are some pretty significant issues with the structure of this film, and I'm not likely to watch it again. Ever.