User Reviews

BamaRush starts out by following a group of girls from around the country beginning their journey at the University of Alabama (UA), some from the moment they receive their acceptance letter. It follows the girls as they decide to begin the process of pledging to sororities. But the documentary is hamstrung by a significant hurdle - they can't film anything inside any sorority house, largely because there has been a rumor that "someone" was making a documentary about sororities, so the director was basically shut out.

BamaRush makes some minor revelations. One, the completely out-of-whack price tag it costs each girl to pledge. Second, that the UA student government association (called "The Machine") is a very powerful and secretive organization - a UA version of Skull & Bones, if you will.

Another detail was the sort of "mini-industry" in the form of pledge consultants - women who coach girls to successfully land the sorority of their choice. There was no discussion of what these consultants charge for their services, but I imagine it is fairly pricey. Beyond that, BamaRush offered nothing particularly new or revelatory.

The group of girls in BamaRush range from sincere to relatively shallow, from white to Black, and not everyone gets what they want. But overall, the lack of access hurts the documentary and it reaches no real conclusion.

A huge problem with BamaRush is the very strange pivot it takes about 2/3 the way through, when the director (Rachel Fleit) literally turns the camera on herself. She changes the story to focus on her battle with alopecia (hair loss). She tries to make the awkward comparison between what sorority acceptance and her past experience because she couldn't be her "authentic self" and had to hide her baldness with a wig. What?!? That comes completely out of left field!

In my opinion, a good documentarian does not make themselves the focus of the film, yet that is exactly what Ms. Fleit has done. There was probably a much more personal and compelling documentary that could have been made that addressed alopecia - a film in which she could have commented the struggles of others and maybe herself at the very end. But to put herself front and center in a documentary when her story has NOTHING to do with pledging a sorority, well that's just wrong.

At the end of BamaRush, you learn little new about the system, and more than you were expecting to learn about the director. A poorly structured and poorly directed effort.

I live in the South, but not steeped in the Southern Belle-type life, because I live in Texas. Different culture, but not "better," just different. I love learning all about other cultures and their traditions. I love UA, in fact. I loved the perspective of the girls who agreed to be filmed in the documentary, including the one who pulled out after the rumors began. My sister chose to pledge in college, but I didn't. No hard feelings or any negativity about that at all. I totally understood the reason that the director stepped in to join the discussion and loved hearing her own experiences as well. I didn't find that it drew the focus of the entire film onto her struggle in life with alopecia and acceptance of herself. It was simply another powerful story of the journey we all go through as women, just in a myriad of circumstances and with an enormous spectrum of results through those journeys. The documentary didn't make me think badly of Greek life at all. It's just one out of a million choices students make as they enter college. I know many women who were in sororities and loved it! I don't think I've ever talked with anyone who had a negative sorority experience, but obviously, there are some out there - as with every activity/organization in life. I'm really glad I watched it and think the girl who was kicked out because of the hairband tied on her shirt should be reinstated immediately. THAT was ridiculous.

I watched this out of curiosity. It made me glad I was in sports in college instead of trying to rush sororities. Learning about "the machine" was very interesting.

I kind of wonder if the off topic scenes where the director discusses her alopecia were filler. Once the college and the sorority members tried to shut down the documentary, it must have been harder and harder to get footage, so maybe she had to put that in there to use up time. I feel horrible that she went through that, but it seemed like she was trying to make it all about her.

I am concerned about the girls who are featured in the documentary. Are they going to face hate, and retaliation, cyberbullying?? I hope they're okay.

I feel like a documentary about this topic has such promise and intrigue being but this totally missed the mark. Any issues with rushing that you typically hear about are barely talked about (how much it costs, legacy members, what bigs/littles are, the cost of the sorority houses themselves, could have touched on fraternity hazing, etc) I mean we could have had a whole documentary just on The Machine and even that doesn't get much airtime. The director spend half of the time talking about alopecia and the other half talking about the drama surrounding the documentary. I also did not find Mikayla or Holliday particularly interesting (their friend drama, visiting Mikayla's dad's grave) and then they both end up dropping out and not rushing at all. There are many YouTube videos out there that do a much better job of diving into the details of what rush is and the entire history behind The Machine.