He borrows a tad too much from "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and "Edward Scissorhands," but this movie has a sweetness at its core that those films lacked - not to mention the amazing Jake Gyllenhaal.Īdvisory: This movie contains sexual humor. "Bubble Boy" was directed by Blair Hayes, who cut his teeth on commercials and made the trailer for " Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me." Hayes brings a wild visual imagination and a great sense of timing. After years of playing it straight on the TV series "Sisters," Kurtz has finally gotten a part commensurate with her skill and ingenuity. Her part is relatively small, but she creates such a well-defined character, and such a strong sense of complicity with her audience, that pretty soon she gets laughs just by showing up. Kurtz has a wicked sense of comic rhythm and a knack for turning any line into a gem. Livingston is prone to reading aloud from "Pinocchio" and improvising the ending: "And then Pinocchio touched the filthy whore who lived next door and died." Determined to keep her child clueless and celibate, Mrs. Imagine Matt Damon's charisma crossed with Jim Carrey's comic daring.Įqually brilliant is Swoosie Kurtz, who gives a wicked spin to Jimmy's sex- phobic, fiercely overprotective mother. Gyllenhaal, whose father, Stephen, is a filmmaker ("Losing Isaiah"), was also terrific in the undervalued "October Sky," but this time he gets to display his comic chops as well. Bubble Boy's mother suers from severe mistrust, resulting in psychotic levels of. This is a star-making performance: It's impossible not to respond to Gyllenhaal's sweetness, wide eyes and dazzling smile, or to imagine anyone whose looks or personality would be more perfectly suited to the role. In Bubble Boy (200), an interesting symbol for trust and mistrust is. Once he leaves home in pursuit of love and experience, Jimmy could be an alien visiting Earth for the first time: Everything is new to him, wondrous and strange. Gyllenhaal is fabulous as Jimmy, a charmed innocent who grew up viewing the world from a distance and inspires people with his purity and lack of cynicism. Compared with "There's Something About Mary," which pushed the limits of taste by placing mentally and physically disabled characters in extreme comic situations, the humor in "Bubble Boy" is innocuous. Vetter's story inspired "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," a 1976 TV movie that starred John Travolta and didn't dare to play the situation for laughs.ĭemaret hasn't seen "Bubble Boy," but if she did, she would discover a goofy, wildly imaginative fantasy that never mocks Jimmy Livingston but celebrates him as a hero who transcends his disability in the quest for love. Especially angry is Carol Ann Demaret, the mother of David Vetter, a 12- year-old Texas boy who suffered from a genetic deficiency similar to Jimmy Livingston's and died in 1984 after living in a protective, germ-free bubble. Despite its wacky but gentle nature and Gyllenhaal's winning performance, "Bubble Boy" has incurred the anger of the Immune Deficiency Foundation, a charity that wants moviegoers to boycott the movie. Along the way he encounters circus freaks, nasty bikers, a Hindi ice cream vendor and a religious cult.īad taste? Some think so. Smitten with the girl next door, Chloe (Marley Shelton), he builds himself a portable bubble suit, runs away from home and hitchhikes across the country to stop her wedding in Niagara Falls. Deprived of immunities,Ĭan't have any contact with the outside world or he'll perish.īut Jimmy, played by the hugely appealing Jake Gyllenhaal, is nothing but resourceful. "Bubble Boy," one of this summer's sweetest surprises, is the story of a 17-year-old boy who's spent his life in a plastic bubble. The treatment cannot cause AIDS.(Rated PG-13. The gene makes a protein essential to building a properly-functioning immune system. Jude, involves taking some of the baby’s bone marrow and using an AIDS-type virus to inject a working copy of a gene known as IL2RG into cells. Sibling donors are usually available in fewer than 20 percent of cases. Treatment usually requires getting stem cells from a donor, which can be dangerous if the donor isn’t a closely-matched brother or sister. The new work “is a significant step forward in the development of gene therapy and specifically for these diseases,” Fischer told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.Įarlier treatments were less efficient and less safe, although the first patient Fischer’s team treated remains alive 20 years later and is still doing well.īubble boy disease, formally known as X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency or SCID-X1, is a rare genetic defect that leaves the baby defenseless against infection. New COVID vaccines should only target dominant XBB variants: WHO.Searching for the origins of the caesar.Feds will join class action lawsuit against McKinsey over opioid marketing.Canada mulls regulating products with ‘forever chemicals’ amid health concerns.
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