There are a lot of things that make being a critic worth it, and I have to admit, to be able to force my readers to make the jump from Two Thousands Maniacs! to Jimmy, the Boy Wonder fills my stuttering, emaciated heart with some sort of sick joy. Any H.G. Lewis fan familiar with his filmography will know how weird is to think that the same man who brought us the first explicit tongue-ripping scene in cinematic history also made a goddamn kids movie. What's more, that kids movie is bizarrely imaginative--far from an unsung classic for the genre, but a breakout effort nonetheless. Of course, you already know I have a bias! This movie is weird as fuck, so of course I'm going to praise it!
Jimmy J. is a kid with a grown-up's schedule. His mom wants him to eat breakfast, take a shower, get on the bus, all at the same time! It's enough to make him wish that time would stop, and unfortunately this is a kids movie, so wishes can warp time and space. To be specific: every 1,000 years there is a single moment where the heart of the Great Clock, which rules all of time, is exposed to the sun, and as such, is vulnerable to wishes. Jimmy's words make time stop, as shown in a series of segments where clearly not all the actors got the same cue to "freeze." Fortunately, Aurora, the daughter of an astronomer-wizard, decides to help Jimmy on his quest to undo his wish by restoring the Great Clock. The two are stopped along the way by Mr. Fig, a checkered-jacket, Dan-Dare-eyebrowed motherfucker who wants to stop time permanently, because statistically there would be at least one individual who would want that. Mr. Fig is a legitimately creepy bastard, grabbing Jimmy, shoving his face up near his, and barely disguising the fact that he hates everything good in the cosmos. But Jimmy is no idiot (the whole time-freezing thing wasn't done out of malice or even misunderstanding, just a lack of awareness that it was a possibility) and throughout this entire movie Mr. Fig's plans fall flat one after another.
The quest takes Jimmy and Aurora to Slow-Motion Land, which is a great way to show off the fact that your editor is familiar with film-speed effects that were wowing audiences six decades prior; to the land of the Green Indians, which ends with Aurora pelting people with hard candy; and to a public domain cartoon that was redubbed by Lewis and Friends to fill out another twenty minutes of the movie. Yes, before you ask, there are musical numbers, and frankly, the songs are not horrible--those with bad lyrics are usually sung well, and those that are sung poorly at least have fun words to them. When we aren't breaking into song the soundtrack is pelted with generic cartoon library cues, and an astonishing number of these cues appear in a lot of the exploitation movies that Lewis' contemporaries were working on. It's a kids movie so there's not much more to it than that: singing, random goofy events, moving towards a general quest conclusion. Jimmy and Aurora don't really go through character development, but we at least learn who they are, and as a team, the two actors work well together.
Overall, the acting is pretty solid. When people fail they are catastrophically awful. But for a kids movie, this is acceptable. You get an impression of earnestness throughout the whole thing, a dedication to the director if not the concept, which is prioritized over the sense of a paycheck. In a kids movie, this is everything. While kids movies have always been decadent and money-hungry, it's hard not to want to give up on a world that will turn out commercialized garbage like The Oogieloves. These movies need heart more than they need economic focus--I mean, they're for kids, after all! H.G. Lewis had nothing, and yet he still made something that's better than even a lot of the recent Dreamworks productions.
It's interesting because as it turns out, kids movies really depend on comedy, or at least a sense of fun, even if they should be allowed and encouraged to go into dark places. The general wackiness of the movie gives it a good atmosphere, and guess what, there are actual jokes that sell in this thing! That's something it's got over me, that's for sure. In a last-ditch effort to stop Jimmy, Mr. Fig tries to say he's turned good and wants to offer him food after his long journey: "Hot dogs...peanuts...popcorn...soda... handcuffs...oh, whoops!" Man, that's a joke that was probably way more innocent in '66...
Actually, that same scene offers a little tidbit that my brain wanted to use to transform the whole scope of the film. Mr. Fig barks at Jimmy, after he refuses again and again, "C'mon, kid! It's not an apple, it's a hot dog!" I had already been joking to myself about Mr. Fig being Satan in Jimmy's Christly Temptation, but there is something symbolic about a villain offering his hero food...in a jungle, no less! Of course, Mr. Fig is simply promising bodily nourishment, not knowledge of Good and Evil or the ability to turn stones to bread. But to view Mr. Fig in the Satanic tempter sense, perhaps literally, gives him an added depth, and indeed depth in the first place--he's not human, we know that much, as he fades away all creepy-like just like Charlie Evans from Star Trek when he's beaten. Plus, whoever he is, he's immune to time itself halting in its tracks. There are probably some Lovecraftian tentacles hiding behind that Robbie Rotten-esque face.
There's some other creepy stuff about the movie besides the slimy Fig. How do you account for the weird half-second close-ups of the strange faces the Green Indians keep making? It jars me every time. Oh, the Green Indians are exactly what you think they are, by the way, and they're racist to be sure, but there's something about being gawked at by a white man in greenface dressed as a Native American stereotype that is visceral even outside of racism. Weirder still is the fact that the Green Indians wear purple pants. This was four years after Marvel Comics started publishing the adventures of a certain green-skinned fellow. Coincidence?
The Green Indians of course represent the main fault in the film, the main thing that's aged poorly. I feel like it's doubly offensive for a kids movie to be racist, because racist media, of course, makes people feel excluded and encourages that exclusion; to exclude kids, and encourage kids of differing races to reduce their peers to stereotypes, is particularly foul. They're not around for long, though, and the good nonsense comes back again.
H.G. Lewis was a filmmaker who cared when he could, which was often, and had luck where he lacked talent. Jimmy, the Boy Wonder is an artifact of what happens when underground or outsider artists aim for something a bit more socially acceptable. As long as they don't compromise their personality, there's bound to be a spark of something in it. And I don't think Lewis could compromise his personality if he tried.
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