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BUBBLE BOY

BUBBLE BOY Jimmy Livingston creates a "mobile bubble" to stop the girl he loves from marrying the town jerk
© 2001 Touchstone Pictures

Can a boy raised inside a plastic room find happiness on the road? Can his journey be funny? Well, yes in theory ...

The makers of BUBBLE BOY should thank their lucky stars for the existence of Jake Gyllenhaal. The young actor is so sweetly amiable and thoroughly game in whatever he's called upon to do that he succeeds in making a fair amount of this high-concept, low-execution comedy actually watchable.

The premise of someone born with such extreme immune deficiencies that he must live out his days in a protective sterile environment was explored famously in the 1970s TV movie THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE, which starred John Travolta. BUBBLE BOY means to play this concept for laughs, introducing us to Jim as a baby with no immune system and tracking him through childhood into adolescence. Jim is good-natured and optimistic, though he's got a skewed view of the world, thanks to the machinations of his wildly over-protective, religious zealot mother (Swoosie Kurtz), who bakes her son cross-shaped cookies and keeps reading him bedtime stories about characters who venture out into the world and promptly expire. Even so, when Jim is befriended by pretty next-door neighbor Chloe (Marley Shelton), his life changes. Chloe's heart is with Jim, but she decides to marry someone else in Niagara Falls, so Jim concocts a bubble suit and heads off in cross-country pursuit.

A biker (played by Danny Trejo) befriends the BUBBLE BOY on his cross-country journey

© 2001 Touchstone Pictures

Enough broad hints are dropped throughout the plot for us to easily anticipate the finale the movie goes for the obvious romantic comedy plot development, which would be just fine if what preceded it were better. However, BUBBLE BOY goes partway down a number of different thematic roads, only to trip along all of them. At first, Barry Robison's production design for Jim's elaborate home environment suggests we're in for a Tim Burton riff EDWARD PLASTICHANDS, if you will but a combination of lack of visual flair on the part of director Blair Hayes and a script by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio wears down any sense of wonder. Attempts at satire misfire due to lack of sharp observation and the broad comedy relies mainly on uninspired sight gags and coincidence rather than construction.

Gyllenhaal's sunniness is truly charming and Danny Trejo, despite being stuck in a silly role, delivers a measure of cool. Diehard fans of either performer will find things to enjoy here. There are also a few isolated scenes here and there that have a light enough touch to induce giggles, including one with Fabio (of all people) as a breezy cult leader.

For the most part, though, BUBBLE BOY is rough going. The movie mocks Jim's mother for her reflexive bigotry, but then goes on its own un-droll riffs, delivering oddball characters who seem meant to be funny simply because they're physically deformed or not white Americans the film can't figure out anything very amusing for anybody to actually do or say. This phenomenon reaches a kind of nadir with the introduction of a good-hearted Indian Hindu who worships the "goddess" Shiva. It's remotely possible that this is an incredibly subtle gag about a devout man who has spent his life worshipping a god he's got mixed up with a goddess in the same pantheon, but since incredible subtlety is to be found nowhere else in BUBBLE BOY, it is more likely a sign of sheer carelessness (among other things). Moviemakers, here's a tip if you are going to poke fun at a religion you don't know a darn thing about, try to at least ascertain the genders of its deities. That way, you won't look quite so much like ignorant yahoos when your jokes fall flat.