Bubble Boy

© 2001 Touchstone Pictures
Directed by: Blair Hayes
Written by: Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Swoosie Kurtz, Marley Shelton, Danny Trejo, John Carroll Lynch
U.S. Theatrical B.O.: $4,211,321
cumulative critic score on Rotten Tomatoes: 29% positive (out of 79 reviews)

With its open mockery of institutional religion and an earnest belief that freedom is the only mortality worth living, Bubble Boy is the most transcendental movie I’ve ever seen in both the historical and quotidian sense. Gyllenhaal’s titular character is a bizarre update of Emerson’s already bizarre transcendental trope: “I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God” (from Nature). And those unabashedly cheerful Universal currents somehow permeate Gyllenhaal as well as the totally offensive ethnic stereotypes (Latinos, Asians, Indians) into an all-embracing mean-spirited catharsis of acceptance. Meanwhile his daily childlike struggle to navigate the world in a body/plastic-prison that is both fragile and cumbersome is simultaneously delightful and heartbreaking, and all the release and forgiveness at the end made me cry real adult tears. To the less sensitive Bubble Boy is just another crap movie with obvious music cues. But I think we can all agree that Marley Shelton is pretty good as Not Heather Graham.

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© 2005-06 Sinlechuga / Dan Hoy