Bubble Boy cover art

Bubble Boy Details

2001 DVD Certificate 12.gif
  • Rated:
  • 70
  • from 1762 members

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 (.. Read more

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Swoosie Kurtz, John Carroll Lynch, Marley Shelton
Director Blair Hayes
Genres Comedy

Sign up Bubble Boy DVD

Buy From: £3.93

loading loading...

Bubble Boy cover art

Bubble Boy

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.

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Swoosie Kurtz, John Carroll Lynch, Marley Shelton, Stephen Spinella, Danny Trejo, Verne Troyer, Dave Sheridan, Geoffrey Arend, Beetlejuice, Betty Blowtorch
Director Blair Hayes
Studio TOUCHSTONE HOME VIDEO
Run time DVD: 1 hr 24 mins
Certificate DVD Certificate 12.gif
Genres Comedy
Language English
Released DVD: 15 Jun 2006
Production year: 2001
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (3) of Bubble Boy

    View all
  • 2 stars out of 5

    The Boy In the Plastic Bubble (1976) provided an early sickly sentimental lead role for a young John Travolta; imagine that TV movie being remade by the Farrelly Brothers and you will get an idea where this wildly uneven comedy is coming from. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a young man with immune deficiencies who is forced by his worried mum (Swoosie Kurtz) to live his life in a bubble. However, when he falls for the girl next door (Marley Shelton), who is about to marry a sleazy musician, the boy and his bubble set off cross-country to reclaim his true love. It's deeply politically incorrect — in the US, the Immune Deficiency Foundation called for a boycott — but lacks the gross ambition of the Farrellys' best films. However, it has its moments and is enthusiastically played by an eclectic cast.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006

  • "...BUBBLE BOY is an updating of PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE with a bit of THE GRADUATE thrown in....[Featuring] some rambunctiously funny set pieces that are like nothing else you'll see this summer....The picture should shock you into laughter..."

    • New York Times
    • Posted 11 Mar 2005

  • Most helpful member's review of Bubble Boy

    View all
  • 6 out of 8 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 3 stars

    Not what you'd expect. If you'd expected anything at all.

    First things last, this film is quite odd. Reading the synopsis of the film I was expecting a quite standard 'Boy on a quest for love' type film with a quirky element (ie. the bubble). But it turned out to be more a mix of 'The Goonies' meets 'Raising Arizona' meets 'Edward Scissorhands', walking alongside episodes of 'Eerie Indiana' and 'Malcolm in the Middle'. I was obviously expecting it to be quirky, what with the subject matter, but I thought it was going to be played quite straight. I firstly wasn't prepeared for the childish slapstick comedy (not always a bad thing) and general buffoonery from Jake 'Donnie Darko' Gylenhaal as he set off across America in his home made bubble suit to get back the girl of his dreams. That alone would have made this film annoying and as un-fun to watch as an adult as 'Honey I Blew up the Baby'. What made this film so unexpected was the sudden yet subtle infusion of the surrounding characters he meets on his way. The racist, almost Nazi parents. The indian with an ice cream van selling ice-creams and curry. The disturbing train load of freaks. The religious, brainwashed 'Wicker Man' style sect who believe in smiling, and will visciously destroy anyone who gets in their way. And so the list goes on. So in a nutshell this film is odd, unexpected, slightly disturbing, but fun at the same time. I wasn't really sure what to make of it. I didn't know whether to laugh, feel embarrased, or wince and wonder 'are they really allowed to say that?' But I'd recommend you watch it. It's always worth trying something a bit different, and at least it'll be something you can tell people about down the pub.

      • ZipBoy from Beckenham
      • Posted 07 Jul 2004 09:31

  • Most recent members' review of Bubble Boy

    View all
  • 3 out of 3 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    Strange

    This a truly strange movie that has the potential to offend numerous groups without being a Farrelly brothers-style gross-out movie. The groups thus maligned are so surreally placed and caricatured that personally I found it hard to take offence - they're not real they just bear a passing resemblance to things that are.

    Jimmy Livingston was born with no immune system and has consequently lived in a hermetically sealed bubble since birth. His mother has taken this opportunity to control absolutely what he sees, who he knows and what he learns and has indoctrinated him in an extreme right-wing philosophy. Despite this Jimmy remains pleasant and innocent since the groups maligned by his mother never impinge on his life as real people.

    In time he falls in love but she ends up engaged to a waster who is to marry her at Niagra falls. Jimmy puts together a mobile bubble and ventures out into an unknown world to claim his love thus beginning one of cinema's wierder quests.

    Jake Gyllenhaal is the key to the film and his performance is the right mix of naivete and courage. Most of the rest of the cast are not so much characters as cliches distorted just enough to make them funny, but they are played with enough verve to make them work.

    The plot is conventional and unimaginative but the bizarre execution makes it work.

      • Gordon Walker from Northern Ireland
      • Posted 29 Sep 2004 15:10

  • More like this

    View all
    Showing 1 to 4 of 20

    loading

Find cinemas


Rating breakdown

1,762 Member ratings
  • 100
212
  • 90
151
  • 80
278
  • 70
299
  • 60
314
  • 50
192
  • 40
128
  • 30
82
  • 20
70
  • 10
36

Related user collection

Buy from the LOVEFiLM shop

    • Bubble Boy

    • Bubble Boy
    • DVD: £3.93
      Free Delivery
    • RRP £15.79 (you save: 75%)
      • 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 ...