A Girl Like Her

Amy S. Weber wrote and directed this earnest but self-righteous look at high-school bullying, a sluggish life lesson that keeps tripping over its own good intentions. On the same day that her high school gets celebrated as one of the best in the nation, tormented teenager Jessica swallows a bottle of pills, ending up in the hospital on life support while her fellow students struggle to make sense of the suicide attempt. Meanwhile, a documentary crew hired to profile the school is given free rein to roam the halls playing gotcha journalism with troubled minors for some reason, and they discover that Jessica had a tormentor (Hunter King, a potential force of nature) with a complicated personal life of her own. A Girl Like Her goes for an ill-conceived blend of found footage and faux documentary that never works, while the script is rarely subtle and often shameless. D.B.