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.