Bully Bad Guys (2020)

Okay. My brain feels like someone shoved a popcorn machine in my skull and just flipped the switch. I’m staring at the black screen on my TV and the credits are rolling and I just… I can’t move. Did I like that? Did I hate that? I don’t know. My cat, Binx, just jumped off my lap like he knew something I didn’t. Smart cat.

I just finished *Bully Bad Guys*. On Apple TV, by the way. Rented it. Saw a poster for it somewhere and it looked so gloriously, stupidly 90s I had to see what was up. It’s not 90s, it’s from 2020, but it has that… *vibe*. You know the one. The direct-to-video vibe your older brother would rent and you’d watch on a tiny CRT TV in the basement. That’s the vibe I was chasing on my Tuesday night, curled up on this lumpy couch that’s seen better days.

And for the first twenty minutes, I was like, oh no. I made a mistake. The dialogue is so stiff it sounds like they’re reading the teleprompter for the first time. But then something shifted. Or maybe I shifted. Maybe the third beer I paused the movie to grab from the fridge is what shifted things. Hard to say.

There’s this one scene. It’s burned into my eyeballs. The main guy, the former bully, he’s trying to have this really heartfelt, serious moment with the kid he’s now protecting. He’s kneeling down, trying to tell the kid it’s okay to be scared, and the camera is just… locked on his face. Super tight close-up. And in the background, out of focus, you can see a street performer doing that robot dance. Just… silently. The whole time. While this guy is pouring his heart out about trauma and standing up for yourself, there’s a fuzzy silver-painted guy in the background doing the robot. I leaned forward so hard I almost fell off the couch. Was that intentional? Was it a mistake? Did they just film on a busy street and not care? I DON’T KNOW BUT I CAN’T UNSEE IT. It’s so weird. It’s like two completely different movies were happening in the same frame and it sent my brain into a tailspin.

It made me think of this one time in seventh grade. There was this kid, Mark, who used to steal my lunch money. Not even a lot, just enough to be annoying. Like, fifty cents. One day I just snapped and yelled at him in the cafeteria. The whole place went silent. And he just looked at me, handed me a dollar, and said “keep the change.” And then he never bothered me again. I haven’t thought about that in fifteen years. Why am I telling you this? This has nothing to do with anything. God, this movie has broken my thought process.

And the fight scenes! Honestly, I thought they were kind of brilliant at first. They’re so clumsy and telegraphed. You see the punch coming from three states away. But then there’s this one moment where a bad guy gets thrown through a fake wall and the whole thing just wobbles like Jell-O before he comically rolls out of the frame. I laughed so hard I snorted. But now that I’m typing this… was it actually good? Or was it just so bad it looped back around to being funny? I feel like I’m being tricked. Is the movie a secret genius, or am I just tired? I don’t know. I thought I loved that part, but now… maybe I was just laughing at how cheap it looked. The whole thing feels like a fever dream. A fever dream you rented for $4.99.

The sound mix was all over the place, too. I had to keep grabbing the remote. One minute the dialogue is whisper-quiet, so I crank the volume, and then the next minute a punch sounds like a cannon going off in my living room and my neighbors are probably filing a noise complaint. Binx definitely hated that part. He shot me a look that could kill.

So, yeah. I’m sitting here. The credits are over. The TV has gone back to the main menu and that annoying, upbeat Apple TV music is starting to play. I feel… weirdly energized? But also confused. My head is full of robot dancers and wobbly walls and Mark from seventh grade. It’s not a good movie. It’s probably not even a “so bad it’s good” movie. It’s just… a thing. A thing that happened to me for 88 minutes. And I think I might need to watch it again just to figure out if that street performer was real or a hallucination.

7/10. I think. Maybe. Don’t trust me.

-Alex

Trailer English - https://youtu.be/CyEm0JWp9E8?si=Kw6cYvZeo_MbMUbw

Review Hindi - https://youtu.be/os8ebgxD7ic?si=ZPl7v-NQ6vqkkzU9