| 80 |
LA Weekly
Mark Olsen
Playfully quirky film takes equal-time potshots at its many easy targets -- fundamentalism, intolerance, ethnic stereotypes.
|
| 80 |
Mr. Showbiz
The bubble-kid moms can whine all they want, but Bubble Boy is a liberated movie --liberated from tastefulness, of course, but also from logic, suffering, consequence, and temperance.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
It's a shame if the controversy surrounding Bubble Boy distracts people from what a smart, subversive, and genuinely good-hearted film it is.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
This movie has a sweetness at its core.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
When it clicks, the picture should shock you into laughter -- enough to make you wish it were better and applaud its efforts anyway.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Jan Stuart
Bubble Boy simply has the gall to make light of one of the last untouchable left in America: disease.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's hardly original and rarely laugh-out-loud funny -- the filmmakers constantly fall back on the sight of bounding balloon Jimmy squeezing his way out of one situation after another.
|
| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
This is a semi-mean-spirited movie; had it remained that way, it could have redeemed itself.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
Belongs to that genre of movie that works hard to achieve a certain twisted and demented wit.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
There's always been room for rudeness in humor. In fact, it can be invigorating. But Bubble Boy goes through the motions of being outrageous when all it's really got is a rage to conform to formula.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Though there are some funny sequences, the frothy Bubble Boy evaporates without delivering enough belly laughs.
|
| 40 |
Variety
Seems bent on creating equal-opportunity offense to many groups, but more often than not is appalling simply for its silliness and lack of comedic control.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
Fitfully funny at best, it's a sophomoric, facetious road comedy.
|
| 38 |
Baltimore Sun
Staff (Not credited)
It seems that in the movies, at least, there is a limit to how far low expectations can take you.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
The coke-fried gibbons behind Bubble Boy came to a trailblazing conclusion: The ideal filmic oddity is white, male, and -- a mother's deception notwithstanding -- perfectly healthy.
|
| 30 |
TV Guide
Hard though this antic farce tries to be outrageous, its satirical jabs at American culture are obvious and juvenile, as is the use of Jimmy's plastic bubble as a goofy metaphor for fear of life.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
This Farrelly brothers "hommage" replicates the mechanics of their work without echoing its spirit or complex tone, and many of the deliberate offenses fail to transcend mere exploitation.
|
| 25 |
New York Daily News
The bubble-boy niche is thankfully small. John Travolta began his career playing one in a TV movie, but this movie will undoubtedly finish off the genre for good.
|
| 20 |
New Times (L.A.)
Nearly every attempt at humor in this witless, completely reprehensible "movie" is mean-spirited and stupidly conceived at the expense of some group that deserves better.
|
| 10 |
Washington Post
What a bummer! Certainly the meanest-spirited film ever associated with the Disney hallmark.
|
| 0 |
Entertainment Weekly
Bruce Fretts
After enduring only a few minutes of this shrill debacle, you'll feel more trapped in the theater than Jimmy is by his bubble.
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