Are You With Us?
Bubble Boy
By Ryan Mazie
February 24, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Flexing his box office muscles (and real ones with Anne Hathaway in the skin-filled Love & Other Drugs), Jake has always dodged the bullet when it comes to a film flopping. While Prince of Persia, a movie that clearly rested on his shoulders, scrounged up an okay $90 million compared to its jaw-dropping $200 million production budget, excluding its massive advertising campaign (did they pay for the sand too at that price?), the film got an overseas bailout. Jake got his second leading chance later last year with the aforementioned Love & Other Drugs, which made an underwhelming $32 million (breaking even with its budget). However, a Golden Globe nomination saved him from total embarrassment.
Now, enough with the number crunching.
So, I had to wonder, when did this Jake Gyllenhaal Hollywood love obsession start? I traced it back to the 2001 comedy Bubble Boy. While he got his start as a leading man in 1999's October Sky, it was Bubble Boy where he was pushed front-and-center, testing him as an audience draw. I am a fan of Gyllenhaal’s work and decided to use the analysis of Bubble Boy to also serve as a way to try to solve this conundrum, since he is about the only good thing Bubble Boy produced.
Bubble Boy stars Gyllenhaal as Jimmy Livingston, a boy born without immunities, forced to live in a bubble, for even a single germ can kill him. Overly protected by his religious zealot of a mother (hilariously played by Swoosie Kurtz – the only compliment I can give this mess of a film. A fake xenophobic ransom letter is one of the few offensive jokes that actually generates chuckles) Jimmy experiences his first taste of life when the sexy but sweet Chloe (Marley Shelton in a thankless role that you’d expect to have seen Tara Reid or Heather Graham in at the time) moves in next door and befriends him. Developing a true crush on Chloe, Jimmy is heartbroken when he finds out she is getting married to her douchebag boyfriend, Mark (Dave Sheridan). Forming a bubble suit, Jimmy enters the world for the first time, racing to Niagara Falls to stop the wedding and profess his love to Chloe.
Along the way, the movie turns into a Looney Tunes adventure, having constant and random side skits involving circus freaks, bikers, an extremely stereotypical Indian who drives a curry and ice cream truck, as well as a religious cult led by Fabio – the first indicator that this film is so not with us anymore.
A supposed comedy, Bubble Boy is just an atrocious mess. Witnessing the surprisingly committed cast try to breathe life into this stillborn film makes watching it even sadder. I didn’t know if I was supposed to feel sorry for Jimmy’s cruel circumstance or laugh at it. I think it was supposed to be a bit of both. No disability, religion, or ethnicity is safe from being mocked here, but the jokes are nothing new and surprisingly vulgar. Seemingly meant for 12-year-old boys and no one else, Bubble Boy bursts before it even lifts off the ground.
Not whimsical enough to be funny and not grounded enough to be relatable, Bubble Boy walks through an awkward limbo that you cannot wait to get out of. At a barely theatrical running time of 84 minutes (I timed it at 77 minutes when I took out the credits), the film still drags into oblivion. First and last time director Blair Hayes can be blamed for the odd breakneck pace of the skits, resulting in little-to-no character background history, making for a boring comedic exercise. There is more character substance in any given Saturday Night Live skit than there is here.
Making a better cartoon than live action feature, one can’t help but wonder if it really was meant to be a cartoon. After all, the opening credit features a hand drawn version of Jake in his bubble suit bouncing against the screen. The constant random subplots are much more fitting for animation, where anything goes. The writing team of Cinco Paul and Kevin Daurio took the cartoon hint, toned down their language, and scripted the animated hits Horton Hears a Who! and the shockingly hilarious and high-grossing Despicable Me (sequel please?).
Released August 24, 2001, the last-ditch attempt weekend before Labor Day where films come to die, Bubble Boy was given a reasonable marketing push and was unleashed in a low theater count of 1,605 venues. Bubble Boy couldn’t even float its way to the top 10, debuting laughably in 13th place with barely $2 million. Opening against four other movies, even Woody Allen’s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, which had almost half the theaters, opened better. With a pitiful $1,269 per theater average, by week three Bubble Boy bounced out of theaters, winding up with a pitiful $5 million ($8 million below its production budget). Distributor Buena Vista (a branch of Disney) didn't even release it overseas.
Critics were as harsh as audiences, as the film earned a 26% ranking on Rottentomatoes amongst top critics.
With wacky hair and an ear-punishing helium voice, Gyllenhaal does what he can with misguided direction and a broken script. With Donnie Darko released exactly two months later, Gyllenhaal turned away from studio work and took the independent route, building a career for himself instead of brief box office futility – something that would be hard to do after the rejection of Bubble Boy.
Returning to mass audiences in the summer of 2004, starring with Dennis Quaid and CGI in Roland Emmerich’s wildly successful The Day After Tomorrow, Gyllenhaal’s box office power remained up in the air, following the film up with an indie (the underrated Proof), and war drama Jarhead. While war flicks were failing left and right, Jarhead had a powerful $27.7 million launch. A great movie I strongly recommend, Jarhead had a shockingly quick box office run that is normally reserved for horror movies and teen romps. Later that year is when Gyllenhaal truly took off, powering the controversial Brokeback Mountain to an eye-popping $83 million total (an unbelievable accomplishment for a movie that was dubbed a “gay western”) and earning him an Academy Award nomination. Later, Gyllenhaal had a rocky 2007 with the underperforming, David Fincher-directed Zodiac, a brilliant crime drama that Paramount butchered with its release date, and the war-critiquing Rendition, which arguably ended up being Jake’s biggest flop since Bubble Boy. However, the even bigger dud was released three weeks later, as the similarly themed Tom Cruise starrer Lions for Lambs saved Rendition from mortification (Fun fact: Meryl Streep, who had roles in both of those films and had a part in the misfire Evening, was in three of the biggest flops of 2007).
So, now by understanding Gyllenhaal’s career, what exactly can we make out of it? First up, I believe that Gyllenhaal is a terrifically underrated actor. Pulling off comedy and drama with great deft, Gyllenhaal seems up for the challenge for any role that Hollywood offers him. Unlike most young actors, Gyllenhaal did not follow the money, instead doing more interesting fare that might not have built up his asking quote, but certainly put him in the back of the mind of casting directors and winning the respect of his peers. However, one role that Jake can’t seem to pull of is the part of an action hero. While he is amiable in Prince of Persia, there is just something goofy about him in that type of part. Jake can do comedy, but when it comes to saving the world with a rugged expression, he falls flat. While this can hinder some of his parts (although the poor script does play a part in his lackluster performance), I would love to see Jake in more comedy roles as he gamely wins laughs in Love and Other Drugs. However, with such an eclectic resume without the typical broad comedy or romance film, Jake’s seat-filling power is still questioned by moguls. I believe Jake can certainly open a film and bring a great amount of publicity to a production. With that said, I do not believe his name alone translates to box office success. His name to audiences means quality, but in today’s world of marketing and hype, prestige can’t sell a movie alone – though it can surely boast it to higher totals.
The best test of his drawing power may be this April’s sci-fi thriller Source Code. Being sold solely on Gyllenhaal without anything else to fall back on, we might finally be able to get a true taste of his paycheck-to-gross ratio.
With the cast, crew, and studio probably wishing Bubble Boy could be permanently erased (and viewers such as myself wanting it to be erased from their minds), the film is one to definitely miss. Hosting an unusually great group of actors (Danny Trejo! Zach Galifianakis! Swoosie Kurtz!), the performers attempt to work miracles on a script that obviously wasn’t there, Bubble Boy can’t even get inflated.
Verdict: Not With Us
2 out of 10