Not having anything better to do, I paid to see this movie. Plus, since we spent some time on the controversy surrounding it recently, I figured I’d see what all the noise is about.
Yes, “Bubble Boy” is the story of a kid born with “no immunities”. That’s what they call it in this movie – “no immunities”. Exposure to any germs could be lethal for little Jimmy Livingston, who finally arrives home in a plastic bubble at age four. Home, by the way, is Palmdale, California and it’s sometime in the 1980’s. Jimmy’s mother, played by Swoosie Kurtz, is an overly protective Christian wacko. And here’s the first interesting thing I quickly discovered while watching this movie- I think some of the protestors got it wrong. While the movie is about a boy in a bubble and there’s plenty of laughs surrounding his travels in that bubble, the real protestors should be some of the wacky right wing Christian groups, because that’s whose the brunt of many of the jokes in “Bubble Boy”.
It took me a few minutes to pick up on this because I was looking for the insensitive jokes about the kid in the bubble. But there goes Swoosie, baking cookies in the shapes of crosses and feeding her socially deprived kid a whole lot of paranoid and anti-Jewish stuff. And what a hoot it is. Every bedtime story ends with something like “and the boy left his home and died”. Later on, after Jimmy leaves that wacky home, his parents make-up a ransom note and sign it “The Jews”. This was one of these movies I suddenly broke out laughing over because I didn’t see the joke coming. It’s some pretty wicked and witty stuff.
Just wait and see the people Jimmy meets up with when he does leave home in an attempt to stop the girl he loves from marrying someone else. And, by the way, Jimmy is an amazingly bright and wonderful kid and is not the butt of many of the laughs in this movie so the anti-Bubble Boy movie crowd should just sit down. He’s kind of the straight man for all nutballs around him and it works really well. Yeah, there are a few scenes that involve Jimmy and his portable bubble problems where he usually ends up getting tossed overboard or run over, but, you know, I was so enjoying this movie, those moments were funny too. But check out the weirdos he runs into- there’s a busload of teenagers who belong to a cult called “The Bright and Shiny” and their leader is played by Fabio. That was funny enough. Pay attention to the men, who all seem a bit too effeminate and howl like I did when Jimmy is told what they are about, which includes suppressing their sexuality. Then there’s a nasty Hispanic biker who brings back memories of “Cheech and Chong” at their best. His first question to Jimmy is “how do you take a dump in that thing?” There’s also a Hindu ice cream truck driver who reminds me of “Apu” from “The Simpsons”. He’s actually selling ice cream and curry and there’s a quick scene of little kids chasing him with their money and screaming “ice cream, ice cream” and then one little dressed up Indian boy clutching his money and yelling “curry, curry”. What a hoot!
All of these people end up following Jimmy to his girl’s wedding and it’s all brought together much better than that other pretender of a madcap movie that’s out called “Rat Race”. The lesson here is never trust anyone who protests a movie and hasn’t seen it. “Bubble Boy” is the funniest movie I’ve seen this summer. I give it an “8.0” on the scale. Too bad it’s being crushed by the bad publicity.
Friday, August 24th, 2001
After seeing another piece of junk summer movie today, “Summer Catch”, I passed on reviewing it on the air and went off the board to this movie instead.
Never heard of it, right? Too bad, this one is about as good as it gets. “Ghostworld” is the story of two high school graduating girls who pretty much hate the world and everybody in it. We all know somebody like this, right? That bored, sarcastic teenager who’s well past the age of innocence and ends up mocking just about everything and everybody around them. Heck, I’m still like that some days.
These teens are two girls, played by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson. Thora is the sort of nerdy looking one, Scarlett is the pretty one. They start off the movie at their high school graduation, and while everyone else weeps and cheers at the speech made by the girl in the wheelchair, our girls roll their eyes and ask each other “why doesn’t she talk about how she got in the wheelchair, the alcoholic?”. That’s what we’re dealing with here. From there they pass their time trying to figure what, if anything, they want to do with the rest of their lives. But, on impulse, they decide to answer some lonely guy’s personal ad. He’s played by Steve Buscemi. The girls pretend to be some woman he briefly met and would like to see again and they hide out in a diner waiting for him to show up. They expect a poor, pathetic creature and they get one.They decide to follow him around because it makes you feel good to mock somebody else’s sad life.
But the movie then takes a path that may surprise you. The nerdy teen takes a liking to the lonely nerdy guy and it all comes off so naturally. The lonely guy is an obsessed record collector but he has the self awareness to know it’s all pretty dumb. This impresses Thora and she gradually falls in love with him, because, deep down inside, they are a lot alike. He moans and whines about not meeting woman and who would want him anyway and she takes this all in and sees that this is a pretty special guy. You can’t beat the pacing of this movie for setting all of this up and the inside look at what may happen to a couple of bitter, bored teens after graduation is so realistic you get caught up with them as if they were real. A very good movie has the ability to do that. It puts you so inside the story you feel like you’re watching people when they’re not looking. And in the end, the Thora character is like most teens, hard to figure out since they don’t even know what they want yet. She frustrated me, but then, I don’t have any teenage children. That’s what it must be like.
“Ghostworld” is special and you should go out of your way to see it, especially during this sad sack of a summer, one of the worst I can remember. I give this movie a “9.0”.
Friday, August 17th, 2001
Hey, it’s a movie with Whoopi Goldberg in it. Now, we’re all up for a Whoopie movie, aren’t we? She hasn’t done one in a while, that Hollywood Squares thing is pretty time consuming I guess. Remember the movies she did make? Okay, this one is about as funny.
I saw the trailers for this movie and was going to pass on it. Then I read a story about it and the movie studio people were excited. They said they had a good old-fashioned comedy recalling the zany days of Hollywood and preview audiences were loving it. Then I read a guy who reviews for Time magazine and he loved this movie. He’s one of these artsy guys I couldn’t imagine would like a madcap comedy, so I figured, why not? Well, it’s a funny thing about comedy. What’s funny to me may not be to you. And this wasn’t funny to me.
Rat Race, a really bad title too, by the way, is the story of a Vegas casino owner who decides to send a group of losers on a treasure hunt for $2 million. John Cleese plays the casino guy and what’s the deal with Cleese’s false teeth? Oversized and annoying, they dominate most scenes he’s in. Anyway, the motley crew of contestants includes Whoopi and her long lost daughter, two brothers, a yuppie lawyer guy who acts above it all, John Lovitz and Kathy Najiimy as a husband and wife with their two kids in tow, Cuba Gooding as football referee who made a bonehead call during a big game(and boy, is that joke overdone here)and Rowan Atkinson as , well, as the weird guy. He’s the British guy who plays the character Bean. You either love him or you hate him. I laughed at him a few times, but he eventually gets paired up with Wayne Knight. Remember him as Newman from the Seinfeld Show? He did a lot of scenes with Kramer that were classic. I think they tried to recreate some of that magic here with Bean and Knight and it didn’t work.
A lot actually went into the making of this movie. There are car scene stunts involving the two brothers which are pretty elaborate, but not funny. It’s actually pretty amazing how little I laughed considering this movie is divided into each of the competing parties scenes and stuff keeps coming at you, and what do you know, I didn’t laugh. They even go the politically incorrect route with jokes about speech impediments and retarded people and lesbian bikers and narcolepsy and child molestation, and still, no laughs. There’s little worse than a politically incorrect joke that falls flat. The most I moved was near the end when Rowan Atkinson makes baby faces and noises at a toddler. That was the extent of my participation in the audience laugh track. They must of thought it would be big hoots when Lovitz ends up in front of a World War II veterans group doing a Hitler imitation and giving the crowd the finger. In fact, I think they even thought it might be a classic scene to be remembered for years and talked about over water coolers, but guess what? I didn’t laugh. There’s even some sadistic scenes like one where a woman tries to run down her cheating boyfriend with a helicopter. It went on and on and actually got sick. I was hoping and waiting for this thing to finally end and it seemed it would not. Till finally it does and it’s a horrible ending where the group ends up at a big world hunger fundraising concert and gives the $2 million away. There, I gave away the ending because I hope it prevents you from seeing this big waste of time. “Rat Race” is rat poop all right. I give it a “2” on the scale.
Friday, August 10th, 2001
It was two years ago this weekend that the blockbuster hit “The Sixth Sense” was released. That was the summer of ’99, the last time we had any movies people actually went to see after the first week of their release. This movie is definitely aimed at the same audience.
Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a stay-at-home Mom with two children. And that’s just her first problem- staying at home. Because home is a big old scary looking mansion, located on the Channel Islands off the coast of England. It’s the year 1945 and Grace’s husband is away at war. She’s left to cope with the kids, but help soon arrives as three strange people show up on her doorstep. One is an old bat who is hired on as the nanny/housekeeper, another is a younger woman who is mute and the third is a quiet old guy who ends up serving as the gardener. Sounds a lot like John Kobylt’s parents and his aunt.
What hits you first here and sticks with you all the way through this movie is “what the heck is going on here”? You soon pick up on the fact that Grace is a panicky Mom and a real nut job. She insists that her kids have a terrible ailment which leaves them allergic to sunlight. That means the curtains must always be drawn when they are in the room, and it means doors must always be shut before another one is opened. Grace is always on edge. It’s not hard to see why, with the Dad possibly dead and the kids ready to melt away like Dracula if they see daylight. But things get even tougher when the inevitable happens in a big old, scary house. Yes, here come the ghosts. Creaking floors, slamming doors, pianos that play on their own.
Now I’m not mocking here – movies with dead people walking around have to have these sound effects and it’s probably the only problem I have with “The Others”. What fascinated me was trying to figure this whole thing out. At times Grace seems sympathetic and caring. At other times she’s a nut case in severe need of Valium. You want to slap her some times. Then there’s her kids- the girl is smart and inquisitive and rebellious and the boy is subdued and mostly frightened. It’s the girl, by the way, who first encounters our ghosts and is, of course, not believed. I don’t know who these kids are, but they’re terrific. I usually hate movies with too much focus on kids, but when these two are on screen they hold their own with any adult in the movie. Then there’s the creepy staff, led by the old woman. You know they’re up to something, but what, what? They’re so calm all the time – what do they know they’re not telling?
If you unravel this thing before we get to the final scenes, good for you. Like “the Sixth Sense”, this movie heads for a big ending. And I loved it. It brought all of my feelings about everything and everybody together and I hadn’t figured it all out! Credit has to go to Nicole, who brings the character of Grace off incredibly well. This is a tricky part, but it all makes sense with the ending. I hope you stay for it because “The Others” is not one of these constant screams, dopey teen scary movies. You have to have some patience with it. I give it an “8.0” on the scale.
