OxfordPress.com

Grade: D+

Verdict: “Freddy Got Bubbled.”

Details: Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Swoosie Kurtz. Directed by Blair Hayes. Rated PG-13 for profanity and crude sexual humor. One hour, 24 minutes.

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Review: The mother of David Vetter, the kid the media affectionately dubbed “Bubble Boy” before his death, is upset. So is the 15,000-member Immune Deficiency Foundation. Ditto an Indiana mother who lost two daughters to the same disease that claimed Vetter.

They think it's outrageous that Disney's Touchstone Pictures has made a comedy movie called “Bubble Boy,” about a young guy named Jim stricken with immune deficiency who heads out into the world (specifically, Niagara Falls) in a balloonlike contraption (it protects him from germs that could kill him) to express his love for a girl before she marries a slob.

Jake Gyllenhaal (“October Sky”) is the actor playing Jim. He says all the “Bubble” trouble should be moot once people see the movie, realize it's a comedy and know that his Jim is played like a hero.

Surely “Bubble Boy” can't be the movie Gyllenhaal is talking about.

It's a travesty — a sad, badly made, badly written little flick full of outrageously gross gags, insipid jokes and tasteless visual puns. It's of the Tom Green “Freddy Got Fingered” ilk.

For a while, there does seem to be a movie in here somewhere. Gyllenhaal is an innocent babe in a bubble, overtly overprotected from the world by his mother (Swoosie Kurtz) and naively in love with Chloe, the girl next door (Marley Shelton).

Also for a short while, the film carries the kind of purity and charisma that made Tim Burton's bicycle flick “Pee-wee's Big Adventure” such a delight.

But “Bubble Boy” isn't a charming kids flick.

The jokes start coming. Like Mom's addition to Jim's storytelling time once Chloe enters the picture: “And then Pinocchio came out of his bubble, touched the filthy little whore next door and died.”

The movie has its way with circus freaks, a dead cow (what comedy these days doesn't?), mud wrestling, penis jokes and more.

As usual, it all ends sweet and nice enough. But that's long after “Bubble” has burst.

— Bob Longino, (none)