Bama Rush

This is marketed as a window into Greek life at Alabama, but I have no idea what is happening here. There is virtually nothing about fraternities and sororities, and a lot of scenes of the director re-saying information that's already been said, more or less verbatim. For example, first they tell you what a NY Times article says, and then they'll pan to the director saying, "There was a New York Times article..." This is when she's not talking about alopecia, begging the question: Why didn't you make a movie about alopecia? It seems to be what she actually wants to talk about, and uses a handful of awkward people pursuing sorority life to talk a lot about her trauma from wearing wigs. Honestly, it's baffling.

ACTUALLY NOTHING TO DO ABOUT BAMA SORORITIES. DO NOT WATCH UNLESS YOU WOULD LIKE TO GET UPSET ABOUT WASTING YOUR TIME. The director is constantly stopping the documentary at times to make it fully about herself who by the way didn't go to bama and wasn't EVEN IN A SORORITY. I understand that she has her own stuff but if that's what the documentary was about then maybe change the name? Also a 1/4 is of the film was them just talking about the documentary and how everyone is going to take it the rumors about it. I'm writing this while watching it because it is that bad. Worst documentary i've ever watched and I watch documentaries a lot.

The director really wanted an inside look into sororities rushing, however it was very apparent she couldn't get anyone to really talk about it. So it turned into a boring character story where the director made the terrible mistake of making themselves apart of the story where they was no correlation to do so whatsoever. If you couldn't get any of the students to talk, then shift the story more to the sorority consultants or previous graduates. Easily could have been cut down to 60 minutes.

And the first 3 minute intro is an absolute piss poor start to give the viewer a false expectation of what they perceive to expect.

I was highly anticipating this film. I felt it lacked a little depth - there was such room to dive deeper into the exclusive nature of sororities and fraternities and there are way more secrets to be shared (coming from a former sorority girl). I felt there needed to be more concersation about how intense the actual rush process is - how expensive, how time consuming, how emotionally intensive it really is. Hugeeeee miss here. Also could have dove deeper about how the sorority girls rank those PNMs. There's a lot of undercover discrimination that goes on there, too. Overall, I think this documentary focuses too much on mental health and what it takes to look like a sorority girl than exposing the truth of what rush is. This was a bit disappointing, lacked focus and was extremely underwhelming.

Interesting documentary about a fascinating, layered topic.

However the pacing was stilted, with only a very small part of the documentary focused on covering the rush process.

The director also interjected into the film multiple times about her experiences with alopecia, and how those experiences paralleled to the experiences of the girls pursuing a sorority. Her experiences and stories with alopecia were extremely important and meaningful, however they didn't relate super directly to the main content of the documentary in an obvious way, and the interjections broke up the pacing and emotional swell of the film.