Innocuous, innocent, and somewhat idiotic, Disney's bubbleheaded road-movie comedy plays as a farcical remake of the 1976 cult TV-movie melodrama The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Jake Gyllenhaal is the goodhearted innocent raised in a sort of human Habitrail of plastic rooms and rubber tunnels. To win back the girl of his dreams (Marley Shelton), he steps out of his indoor greenhouse and into a homemade Ziplock bubble suit. It's the usual story: naive innocent bounces down the highway like a beach ball with legs and wins over the wacky supporting cast of soft-hearted bikers, zombielike teenage cultists, and orphaned "freaks" through purity and pluck. The premise wears thin after a while, but Gyllenhaal keeps the film bounding along with goofy innocence and energetic eagerness. Swoosie Kurtz costars as his religious-zealot clinging mom. Watch for Fabio in an inspired cameo. --Sean Axmaker
2.
BUBBLE BOY is a zany and lighthearted but irreverent road comedy from music video director Blair Hayes. Jake Gyllenhaal (OCTOBER SKY) stars as Jimmy Livingston, a young man born with an immune deficiency, who is forced to spend his life inside a sterile plastic bubble. His overprotective, fanatical right-wing Christian mother (Swoosie Kurtz) doesn't let him have friends, and the only TV show she lets him watch is LAND OF THE LOST. The pretty girl next door, Chloe (Marley Shelton) visits him, and the two become friends. Because they can't touch each other through his bubble, they keep their passions in check, but when Chloe goes to Niagara Falls to marry her creepy boyfriend, Jimmy builds a portable bubble and leaves home for the first time to stop her. BUBBLE BOY may offend some with its jokes involving religion and sex and physical deformity, but it's clear that the filmmakers push the envelope, not simply to shock, but to make cogent points about tolerance. The film features surprisingly strong and funny supporting performances from Vern Troyer (Mini-Me from AUSTIN POWERS) and Fabio. In the lead role, Gyllenhaal projects such genuine wide-eyed sweetness that it's impossible not to root for him.
3.
The life of Jimmy Livingston, (JAKE GYLLENHAAL) a young man born without immunities and raised in a manufactured world provided by his well-intentioned, but misguided mother (SWOOSIE KURTZ). Jimmy is happy enough, and has all the same experiences of other boys and girls growing up -- except he lives in a bubble. But when Jimmy realizes that he's in love with Chloe (MARLEY SHELTON), the girl next door, he has no choice but to build a mobile "bubble suit," and set off across the country to Niagara Falls, to stop Chloe's wedding -- which is only days away -- in time to confess his love to her. Along the way, he crosses paths with freaks, bikers, rock stars, and a cult, racing against the clock and his parents who are determined to bring Jimmy back to the safety of his "bubble room."
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