ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) Invisible Children's "Kony 2012" is an American half-hour documentary from 2012 as the title already says and this one is an example of a film that really only got big thanks to Youtube as it reached over a hundred million views in the 5.5 years since its release. The director and one of the many writers working on this project is Jason Russell and it is by far his most known work. And it may very well be his most personal too, but there the problems start. The way in which he makes his family a vital part of his approach feels awkward to say the least, right at the beginning, but also even more when he asks the boy who the bad guy is and then he pulls out a photo of Kony and has his boy say that he needs to be stopped. This did feel highly scripted to be honest. And scenes like these let me agree with those saying it's propaganda. But that doesn't mean it has to be for the wrong side. I know that it is discussed controversially to which extent Kony is the bad guy or if this film is just trying to justify another war based on assumptions and conclusion-jumping. Anyway, I am not deep enough in the subject to comment on that in detail, so I just rate and elaborate on this documentary in terms of what it presents and how it presents it and the biggest flaw I already mentioned earlier. On the good side, it was nice that attention to the subject of Kony was brought with this film as Russell is basically very correct in saying nobody knows who Joseph Kony is and that needs to be changed and it was through this film, which is among the key reasons why I am not giving it an even lower rating. But that doesn't mean you should believe everything you see in here. A critical approach is always appreciated. I personally give Kony 2012 a thumbs-down and don't recommend checking it out. I'm somewhat glad it only ran for 30 minutes as it was really very cringeworthy at times and clearly aimed at simple minds that it admittedly managed to impress in great numbers.

Luis Costa This movie is excellent because it makes many people move beyond their screen. Yes it's propaganda, but I don't remember any movie that hit so much success so fast as this one. Inverting the Triangle of Power in our society added a bad guy, a good guy, a children and giving people something to do produced a big Storm but the IC story is very far from ending. Quarrels about how bad the Invisible Children are led the director of the movie to a breakdown, he didn't know how to stay away from the mess and because he is just a human being he collapsed. It also shows how people are quick to find a target to dump their trash. Can you still review your opinions or keep them to yourselves and try to make a better world instead of publishing hate messages?

jennyhor2004 Having heard about this 30-minute feature going viral across Youtube and various social networking sites, I determined to watch this film championed by mysterious US charity Invisible Children for myself. I found it a very slick and manipulative piece of propaganda aimed at young people and families with children. The film starts with director Jason Russell and his family, and zooms in on his young son from birth on to his preschool years before branching out to the lost children of Uganda, children like Jacob who have lost their families and have been forced to join the Lord's Resistance Army as soldiers (if they're boys) or sex slaves (if they're girls) under the sinister charismatic leadership of one Joseph Kony. Russell dwells for a little time on Jacob and his experiences before delving into a drive for support and donations to help other young people like Jacob, and suggesting ways in which people can bring the issue of child soldiers and finding Kony to be brought to justice to the attention of others.Russell adopts a deliberate personal style to make very subjective appeals to people's emotions. His use of his son as willing collaborator is creepy as well as exploitative, to say the least. The filming methods used are so slick as to raise my hackles: the editing and the images, even the sloganeering and strategies suggested to raise other people's awareness, all look as if they'd been cooked up in an advertising agency that's done work for past TV current affairs programs. The themes pushed by "Kony 2012″ are so familiar as to be banal and devoid of genuine feeling: let's change the world for the better, let's be pro-active, let's protect innocent and vulnerable children from exploitation (speak for yourselves!), let's bond in solidarity with other aware young people and fight this monster Joseph Kony and triumph where older people can't or won't.No historical context is given, which is extremely suspicious: the film never explains who Joseph Kony is, why he is such a bogeyman and who his Lord's Resistance Army is fighting against. What is his background, how and why is he a rebel, what political / social / economic conditions existed in Uganda in the 1990s that enabled him to rise to his current position as Uganda's Public Enemy No 1, and why should we get rid of him now when we could have got rid of him ages ago? Is the Ugandan government under President Yoweri Museveni so helpless that it must appeal to the outside world? Is Kony fighting the Ugandan government? Given that Museveni has just been "elected" to a 4th term and has been in power for 25 years with a blemished record in violating human rights, invading parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and holding elections that yield suspect results that support his continued rule, perhaps Kony is doing the right thing in resisting the Ugandan government! The film's suggested solutions are pathetic and laughable: let's make Kony famous by plastering posters of him across cities around the world on 20 April 2012! Support celebrities like Angelina Jolie, George Clooney and Bono against Kony! Buy the Action Kit package! Wear the "Kony 2012″ bracelets! Donate money to the cause! The Kony 2012 awareness campaign looks too much like an election campaign to ring true. And why should the public be asked to cough up money when famous Hollywood celebrities and other stars in politics and the commercial music industry have more than enough money among themselves to capture and bring Kony to justice and rehabilitate the child soldiers and sex slaves he has abused? And now that all is said and done, one suspicion remains: the recent announcement of the discovery of at least 2.5 billion and maybe as many as 6 billion barrels of oil in Uganda couldn't have anything to do with the release of the "Kony 2012″ film? How cynical of me to think that a future invasion of Uganda by AFRICOM might need support from young people in the form of a "humanitarian" campaign! In the meantime, hundreds of children in northern Uganda have fallen victim to a mysterious and fatal neurological disease known as Nodding disease spreading across the border from the newly independent Southern Sudan. It is arguable that this problem deserves more immediate attention and help than pursuing a shadowy warlord who may not even be in Uganda now or be alive still.

rgcustomer The first part of the video isn't bad. Despite being clearly manipulative, it draws the viewer in, providing some context with the narrator's family and a young African. Then it hits the viewer with the evil Joseph Kony (which ought to be pronounced like Koñ, but is Americanized in the video) -- kidnapper of a child soldier army, and sexual enslaver of children.So far, the video works.Where it goes off the rails is by first admitting that Kony is no longer in Uganda, and then suggesting we help fight Kony -- by supporting the army in Uganda. What? This disconnect is never explained. It's unlikely the Ugandan army will be welcome in foreign countries who have their own military. A last comment about the video is that the language used suggests a world-wide movement, but in fact it's almost entirely focused on the US, with slight mention of Canada. The website also lists Bono and Ban Ki-Moon as the only non-North-American names of note.Now is the part where I ramble about the subject.Have a closer look at the Ugandan army. It too has been reported to use hundreds of child soldiers, despite Uganda being a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which bans this practice. They might not be as hard-core about it as the LRA, but they are not the good guys here. They are the lesser evil. Probably.The Ugandan government is also rotten. For example, they've been trying to pass a bill that would make it a capital offence not to report your own gay brother and his boyfriend to the police (read the bill, if you don't believe me -- it's not just gay people who will die). If passed, this bill could do as much damage to Ugandan teens and young adults and their families as Kony did to younger children and their families, and it will have the power of government behind it.The video repeatedly refers to the LRA, without focusing on the root cause. The LRA is the Lord's Resistance Army, a Christian cult. It was even praised by Rush Limbaugh for this reason. Kony claims to be able to channel the Holy Spirit, and that the Army's purpose is to promote the Ten Commandments. (As with many Christians, they don't believe killing the guilty, nor killing in warfare, are prohibited by the Commandments). This group could not exist without societal support for the idea of Christianity specifically, and other religious nonsense (e.g. channelling) generally. People fear this man not just because he's a murdering fiend, but because he's "magic". He shouldn't have that power. If we treat the symptom but not the illness, it will come back with a new name. Uganda is a place where to this very day, witch-doctors tell adults to mutilate and kill children (their own, or others) to sacrifice their remains to the spirits. And they do it.Yes, stop Kony. Where he actually is. According to the video, that's somewhere in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, or the Democratic Republic of Congo.But this needs to be followed up by a serious education campaign. Uganda is a land of lies and nonsense. A free or nearly-free education in science, logic, and critical thinking is needed to save that country from itself. Something like One Laptop Per Child (not mentioned in the video, and who might not align themselves with my comment) is a good start, but it's going to take a lot more than that.I will point out that the Commonwealth of Nations did not stop Kony in its member state Uganda. What good is it?Utlimately, I give the video a 7 for drawing attention to one serious problem, even if their solution is wrong. It does have people talking.