Joey's Team

This movie is an excellent example of film-making on a low budget. Based on the structure of "3 Little Pigs" plus variation, it is well constructed and fairly well cast (the bully, Hayes, is well acted but not really believable. Joey's mother is not believable at all). The story provides excellent opportunities for exploring parental and teenage values. Those that condemn this little gem of a film have, perhaps, a great deal to learn about films and film-making. This is a very useful film in teaching first year students about a variety of aspects of film.

John Hill. Senior Lecturer, Film Video and Multimedia, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa

Stick and Stones is an extremely well acted movie about a group friends, who are being bullied and what lengths they go to stop the bully. I have to say though, Sticks and Stones may seen like a teen drama and even though it is, it still features quite a big of bad language and violence, which may not suit everyone. Max Goldblatt and Mark-Paul Gosselaar are just a couple of the great cast in the movie.

On one hand, you have a viewer that may not understand the purpose of this film and has no desire or forethought to begin to do so. On the other, one that is perhaps more realistic in rating this film based on their version of the intent of the director.

Like The Boys Club, I look at this film as targeting 12-15 year old, boys particularly, faced with dealing with guns and violence in general. If a child is younger than that, it may be more destructive than productive, depending on the parent supervising. Older kids will think it is lame only because they want may want the target to be other, younger kids to avoid attention to themselves.

What I see is this. The film teaches the parents and the aforementioned aged youth, the value of peaceful resolution of issues, the seriousness of the mis-use of guns and the tremendous peer pressures that fall on kids that are not adults but are not really kids anymore either. Those that choose not to take the movie seriously or consider it crude, may not be realistic in their own assessment of the film's target age group, the lessons to be learned, the presumed goal of being realistic or may be in denial that this likely has happened in real life over and over in larger cities like LA, Chicago and New York.

I am a mentor of an at-risk youth in Portland, serve on the Board of Directors of a Police Activities League, have a son that is not old enough to watch this yet and am learning teen development by hands on experience. I am not an expert I wouldn't think, but I do see true value in this film and the lessons to learn from it for the audience that it was clearly made to cater to.

I welcome a debate or confirmation to discuss this if anyone chooses to do so. I promise to be open minded and as non-bias as I can.

I thought I would see plenty of hard-hitting drama in this, but was disappointed in many areas. This is more of a baseball tale (ala "The Natural") than a drama about bullying. The three main characters are generally bad actors, making scenes that are supposed to be disturbing rather cheesy. I actually had more sympathy for the abused bully than these nerds. He went through a lot more punishment than they did, especially because of his home turbulent life. Also, it's interesting how the rich kid's older brother bullied him almost as much, yet we're supposed to find him likable? I think not. The ending was VERY predictable and drug out, I couldn't wait to see the end credits pop up. The only reason to watch this sloppy flick is Gary Busey who does his usual tough guy routine. That man is never a bore, no matter how often he is type-cast. So, I gave this flick an extra star because of Mr. Busey. Otherwise, I regret streaming it on Prime Video at all.

This is a terrible piece of film making. I was shocked at all the bad language. I was hoping to watch a enjoyable family film with a touching story but was outraged by the content. There was no touching story just a bunch of foul-mouthed kids who mess about with a gun. Shame on you Kirstie Alley and Gary Busey.