The Jimmy Show

Rating:
Summary: The Family Center Cannot Hold
Review: I'm not surprised to be the "first to review this DVD" not because the film is bad--on the contrary, it's very good, but because it's tough getting films like this across to a conformist audience anymore. Show me a Hollywood film released in the last five years that ISN'T about keeping the family unit intact and I'll stop doing Amazon reviews.My brother in law asked me "is this because Hollywood is giving people exactly what they want; or is it because Hollywood as part of some disiplinary matrix is keeping the populace pacified by films like this-- making them believe that BEING is all that matters because BECOMING is to dangerous and threatening to EMPIRE?"

For instance,everyone raved about how great and gritty and real "Narc" was, but reduce it down to its esccence and what do you get? Answer: a flawed but good cop just trying to keep his dead partners family together via benifits from the PD. Check out "Gladiator" ('Just wanna get back to my wife and kid') or "Master and Commander" ("This [the ship] is your home!)etc, etc.

My answer was, "we, as a society, have pretty much internalized the lust for being over becoming and don't need anyone to remind us. But we don't need to be reminded that Coke exists either and yet...[to clarify my terms: BEING is holding on to the status quo no matter the cost. Becoming is being willing to risk holding on to the status quo--even family-- in order to effect real and lasting change.]

And I'm not talking about becoming a rock star or a pro athlete or some other celeb or becoming an accountant or lawyer or any number of the socialy acceptable (read: harmless) roles we're allowed to strive and struggle for. I'm talking about becoming a changed society--a society that doesn't sit back and passively watch Arnold get thirty million dollars to do "Terminator Three" while there are millions who can barely lift their hands from weakness to accept a crumb. A society that revolts against them telling us: "hey you can just be you and we'll put YOU on TV! because what's really important is what regular guy this regular chick picks to marry in a million dollar wedding so they can go on their millon dollar honeymoon. And don't concern yourself with the fact that while you watch, another half a dozen civillians just bought it in Bagdad joining the ten thousand we already killed over there..." Alas, we're far from being that kind of society, so films like the "Jimmy Show" are marginalized or simply ignored.

Jimmy seems to make his decision to be a stand up comedian based on not much of anything. It's sort of a knee jerk reaction to not wanting to be like the rest but made by a guy ill-equipped to seek original options. His tragedy is NOT like the Amazon synopsis says--driving home my rambling point--that "what is important[family]has been there all along"; but that Jimmy knows there is something wrong but unlike Neo in the "Matrix" doesn't have the imaginaion or the energy to do anything about it. The result is, he loses his family. Whaley isn't trying to tell us :Gee, if this guy only knew that his family was all that really mattered he'd happily live out a dull existence." He's telling us: "look, here's a guy that knows there's something wrong with the dreary consumer existance everyone around him is living but he's so mired in it himself, he can't think beyond being a stand up comedian as an attempt at escaping it all. In the end he fails to escape and loses his wife and kid in the process."

See this movie and also Whaley's first: "Joe The King"

Rating:
Summary: Kinda Depressing....
Review: 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.