 | |
List Price: $9.98 | | Label: First Look Pictures
Salesrank: 120361
Released: May 27, 2003 |
| Our Price: $2.99 |
| Used Price: $0.01 |
|
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Jimmy O’Brien is a stand-up comedian – and not a very good one – which explains his day job at Tops Grocery. Like any dreamer, Jimmy yearns to escape his working class roots and make it big, if not for the nagging details of his small life. Jimmy lives with his high school sweetheart Annie, their daughter Wendy, and his wheelchair-bound grandmother Ruth in a sagging house propped among the stark suburban sprawl of blue-collar New Jersey. Jimmy finds release amid a lonely stretch of comedy clubs along the Jersey Turnpike. Like a poor man’s Lenny Bruce, Jimmy lets fly with a biting commentary on the naked details of his life. As Jimmy’s situation devolves with passing year, so too does his routine, until the line between persona and reality is blurred entirely. In the uncompromising style of his acclaimed feature debut Joe the King, Whaley’s The Jimmy Show explores an America where dreams are sometimes few and far between. With honesty, compassion, and wit, The Jimmy Show reminds us that sometimes what we’re searching for has been there all along.
The Jimmy Show Reviews:
Vastly underrated 
2008-09-19 - In order to be a good critic one has to rise above one's personal biases. Period. If one cannot get past hating love stories or action films, then one should not practice the craft, because there are good films that are mere love stories or action films. It is the excellence of the film, and how it achieves its excellence, that is more important than what sort of a film it is. This basic lack of understanding how to separate one's likes from the objective ability of art to effectively communicate, is why most critics fail in their task. On a related plane is the inability of many critics to distinguish between when a film is something, and when it is merely about something. A good example of this is the 2001 independent film by actor/director Frank Whaley, called The Jimmy Show (nothing at all like the Jim Carrey vehicle, The Truman Show); his second directorial effort after 1999's lauded Sundance Festival film Joe The King. It is a very good, albeit not great, film about the depressing life of a working class loser. Yet, the film itself is never depressing, despite its being damned to obscurity by critics for that very fact. Again, the point is that film critics claimed something about the film that is about what the film portrays, not how it portrays it.... In many ways, Jimmy O'Brien is like George Bailey, from It's A Wonderful Life, save for two things- the first is that he's a miserable person whose own misery has cost him everything. He has no Mr. Potter as antagonist, and although George Bailey's choices also result in his depression at the end of that film, all of his choices have been selfless, not selfish. Jimmy O'Brien, on the other hand, has been behind all of his failures, because he has tried to please no one but himself. The second is that Jimmy O'Brien is beyond help and hope. Even were a guardian angel, like Bailey's Clarence Oddbody, to intervene, Jimmy would never pay attention long enough to learn. He has no need for others' counsel, and cares not to hear it.
In this way, The Jimmy Show is the ultimate realist film, for there are far more Jimmy O'Briens in the world than George Baileys. But, it is the life of the fictive Jimmy O'Brien that depresses one, not the film about him, for this little film can make one feel much better about the lives they've lived, not only because how well the portrait of him is crafted, but if only because a viewer is not as badly off as the lead character. How many DVD viewers lead lives that have far too much truck with aspects of the characters from this film? I would say too many- most of whom would not want to admit it, which is the answer as to why this film was so unfairly panned upon its release. Looking into a mirror, when one does not like what one sees, is always a downer, and The Jimmy Show is a filmic mirror for far too large a portion of an American audience for it to have ever had any great financial nor critical success. But, it is the failure to look at what the mirror reflects, rather than what the mirror is, that was the cause for much of the hostility that this good little film engendered. But, with that knowledge in mind, take a second glance into the looking glass of The Jimmy Show, and Jimmy O'Brien's life. It's worth a bit of redemption, if not for him nor you, then for art.
Top five 
2007-09-08 - This is one of my top five favorite films of all time. I don't understand why people find it so depressing. Yes, it's SAD- but COME ON!! It's interesting and intelligent and honest and it has real value. What is genuinely sad is the majority of films that DO get good distrabution that lack this much honesty and unique and understated acting. It's the best thing I've ever seen Carla Gugino and Ethan Hawke do! As for Frank Whaley- I mean, good God, he's on a whole other plane. And it's FUNNY! There are two scenes in particular that make me laugh each and every time I see them. Whaley somehow makes Jimmy O'Brien a real PERSON. He's so overwhelmingly flawed and quirky and funny and sad and complex and REAL and just so fascinating to watch. I care about him and what happens to him within the first two minutes of the movie. I BELIEVE Carla Gugino and Frank Whaley's realtionship so much more than almost any other film I've seen. I laugh and cry no matter how many times I've seen it before. In my opinion, performance wise- it's beyond anything anyone could ever hope for in a film.
Whaley gives a great performance 
2005-08-08 - Frank Whaley (Pulp Fiction, Swimming With Sharks, School Of Rock) stars a Jimmy, a stand up comedian who isnt that funny. He works with his friend, played by Ethan Hawke (Before Sunset, Assualt On Precinct 13, Taking Lives), at a Grocery store. He has a wife Annie, played by Carla Gugino (Sin City, Spy Kids, Tv's Spin City) and they have a daughter. Jimmy's life takes a bunch of turns, his wife Annie cant stand the life she's living, the house she's living in and Jimmy, so she takes their daughter and goes back to live with her mom. Jimmy gets fired from the Grocery store from taking beer and then jumps around with different jobs. His comedy really sucks and their are scenes where he gets into fights with the audience members. The movie itself is good, but the good part is Whaley giving a great performance and also taking a crack at written and directing.
Tough room
2004-10-04 - The second directorial effort from actor Frank Whaley, best known to mainstream audiences for brief yet memorable roles in "Field Of Dreams" and "Pulp Fiction". Whaley has become a mid-level "star" of sorts in the realm of indie film, usually playing tortured, angst-filled characters whose actions belie his benign "baby-faced" exterior ("Swimming With Sharks", "Homage"). "The Jimmy Show" is no exception-in fact, Whaley, who directs himself as the main character, rather over-plays the angst in this relentlessly downbeat story. "Jimmy" is a smarter-than-average "Joe Six-pack" who supports his wife and invalid grandmother by working a dreary, souless warehouse job. One day he decides to take a stab at performing open mic stand-up at the neighborhood comedy club. On the same day, his wife announces she is pregnant with thier first child. I would like to say that the story takes off from there, but it doesn't. Oh- I almost forgot-his wife eventually leaves him, he gets even MORE depressed, loses his job and his grandmother dies (if he had a dog, I'm sure it would get run over). Aside from the odd "6 months later" or a "2 years later" CG to advise the audience that time is passing, we don't detect any growth or redemption in Jimmy's chronically underachieving life (nor in his stand-up act, which consists of un-funny, self-loathing psychobabble that he should be unloading in a psychiatrist's office, not onstage). As a former "part-time" comic myself, I can assure you there is no comedy club manager in the country that would let someone with an act that vitriolic continue performing for several years in a row (they would lose all thier customers!) The piece is well-acted and directed, but the question becomes: Do we really need to go the movies and pay money to be reminded how dreary and despairing day-to-day existence can be?
Kinda Depressing....
2004-05-11 - This was a pretty depressing film. You have Jimmy O'Brien who by all accounts is a loser. He works at a Supermarket where he is eventually fired for stealing cases of beer. He lives with his invalid grandmother whom he cusses out on occaision, he marries his highschool sweetheart, they have a daugther and they all live in that small house that's constantly falling prey to termites. On top of this he is a terrible stand up comic who talks about his problems, his trials and tribulations but it never seems to amuse his audience, it's stand up tradegy and not stand up comedy. For some reason I liked this movie. Jimmy's life never gets any better, in fact it gets progressively worse to point where you think he'll snap but the movie leaves off there. There is really no happy resolution. Hmm seems like reality or an anti-film much in the vein of I SHOT ANDY WARHOL.
