Make no illusions about it, this by no means is a great movie but it at least really knows how to be fun and entertain.
Key to this movie is not to take it serious at all. It actually is being one crazy and silly movie, that really doesn't feature that much story and the little story that it does feature is incredibly flawed and badly written once you start to analyze it too seriously, which you really just shouldn't do.
As a comedy this movie certainly does not fail. It made me laugh and I enjoyed watching the movie throughout. You might think this is being just a one joke movie about a boy living in a bubble but the movie manages to come up with plenty of fun and original stuff. As bad as the script and story are, the comical situations and dialog are all still well written and executed. Seems weird that director Blair Hayes never had a career after this movie, since he seems far more talented than the majority of modern comedy directors these days.
It's basically a movie in which often a lot of random crazy stuff is happening. And this is also one of the more bad things about the movie I think. The movie is really hanging together from its coincidences and decides to simply go along with it all, purely in the interest of its comedy but it instead more comes across as some lazy and very simplistic film-making. The movie still works out well for most part but at others it just becomes too silly and even somewhat embarrassing to watch. But luckily it never really starts to annoy, or anything like that because the movie is just simply being too short for that.
It's also a movie that is hanging together from its lots of random cameos. But I actually sort of like that about this movie and actually seems to fit the style of the movie. Probably reason why I like the cameos is because the movie doesn't feature any cameos from well known comedians but more from cult figures, such as Beetlejuice and Fabio and some up and rising comedians, such as Zach Galifianakis, who at the time still was pretty much an unknown in the film industry.
But also the main characters and actors are being really good and enjoyable in this movie. Jake Gyllenhaal is actually genuinely good and fun in this early comical role by him and in contrast with the movies he wants to be associated with these days. I'm secretly hoping he'll someday return to silly comedies.
Despite all of the complaints, this still remains a perfectly watchable and fun little comedy.
6/10
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