Jimmy and Judy

Plot synopsis:
Jimmy and Judy is the latest cross country crime spree film to appear on the silver screen,
and on dvd. The film follows the youth angst genre of crime films that was first started
by The Doom Generation, and Natural Born Killers.Edward Furlong (Terminator 2) stars as Jimmy, and Rachael Bella costars as Judy. James Eckhouse (Beverly Hills 90210) plays Jimmy's Dad, and William Sadler portrays
Uncle Rodney.The film uses a lot of hand held cameras, much like Blair Witch Project, and Cloverfield.
Jimmy records most of the sex scenes, and shooting sprees, with help from Judy.At the start of the film Jimmy spies on his Dad cross dressing, and having sex with
his mother (Gay Storm) getting into a bondage orgy.Jimmy and Judy then run over a street person, and get pulled over by the cops. Jimmy
shoots the officer, and we later find out the cop car had video camera running.There is another scene where Jimmy shoots down a speed freak, who is raping a female
druggie. Jimmy makes Judy hold the gun with him during the shooting.The fugitives then make their way to a ranch owned by Uncle Rodney. Uncle Rodney forces Judy to have sex with him, so that the couple can stay on the ranch. Jimmy
shoots Uncle Rodney, and rescues Judy from her.The outlaws get stopped by the cops at a roadblock, and are gunned down after Judy
refuses to stop the vehicle.Jimmy and Judy has a lot of gratuitous violence, and provides a kind of social commentary about a couple of doomed misfits. Uncle Rodney provides an interesting
observation about how the counter culture is dead, and how his group of bohemian
dropouts are garbage, that are going to burn down corporate capitalist society.Edward Furlong, and Rachel Bella provide strong performances. William Sadler also
does great acting as Uncle Rodney.The film is well directed, and written by Randall Rubin, and Jon Schroder.Jimmy and Judy does provide a compelling story of a Kentucky crime spree, but falls short of other films like Natural Born Killers. Jimmy and Judy will probably obtain a cult following much like the The Doom Generation has.

Tags: cruelty, murder, violence, cult, romantic, revenge

Review:
I then realized that that must be the reason why it's being shown at this mainstream theater rather than being confined to the Esquire or the Mariemont theaters.Jimmy and Judy is one of those relentless gritty and voyeuristic couple-on-the-run movies.
It's all about the effect of alienation, vindication most people only think of under the influence of serious bouts of anger, and other things that, in a movie, are not for everyone.
William Sadler's character alone is one of the scariest and most realistic people I think I've ever seen in a movie.Jimmy and Judy is not quite at the status where it can be called a great movie, but it has a very clear message and a very precise and innovative way of conveying it.
That period of life does not, however, extend beyond high school, which might be why 21-year-old Jimmy (played by a plump, 30-year-old Eddie Furlong) manages to get a high school girl to fall in love with him.
Judy is clearly a smart and successful student who one day is attacked by a group of girls, the bad kids (by the way, do high school girls really do this?
It's an extremely simply made film, shot almost entirely from the perspective of a home video camera and cut for the most part to run like an unedited MiniDV tape.
Personally, I knew a lot of people like Jimmy (minus the killing) in high school because I hung out with the wrong people for a couple years.
I don't know why people hang out with people like that, they are highly unpleasant to be around, particularly the nutty ones like the crackhead that Jimmy and Judy shack up with for a couple hours midway through the movie.
It's also interesting that he looks so handsome on the cover box, because little Eddie has become quite the meatball.Anyway, his Jimmy in this movie is an unhinged lunatic with absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever, while Judy is pretty and smart.
We do, however, see in great detail why Jimmy is so twisted (we are, after all, products of our environment, and his parents' relationship is one of the sickest marriages I've ever seen, in a movie or otherwise), but we learn nothing about Judy's past, including why she was being bullied at school.
WOW.I would hate to be the one to burst his balloon, but I have a feeling that the subtraction of a lot of criminals and junkies and drunks is not exactly going to make society weakerUltimately, the movie starts off as a serious downer and goes downhill from there.
And by the way, some lunatic from the San Francisco Chronicle has claimed that this is the movie that Natural Born Killers wanted to be, and at 1/20th of the cost.
Realistic, haunting, and down right disturbing, I couldn't stop thinking about this film for days - in a good way.The chemistry between the two leads, (Edward Furlong and Rachael Bella) is amazing.
First off, this film is shot entirely from a first person perspective, ala Blair Witch, but seriously, do NOT let that scare you away.The titular characters are played by Edward Furlong and Rachael Bella (both of whom attended the premiere in SF tonight).
Rachael Bella you may recall as the "crazy chick" who witnesses the bizarre death of her teenage friend in the beginning of The Ring (boy, I really hope I didn't give anything away there).The story unfolds exclusively from the perspective of Jimmy's video camera.
He's a video junkie (not unlike the neighbor character in American Beauty) and feels the need to "document" every important event in his life on tape (including certain aspects of his parents' relationship, and there's no way in hell I'm giving up *that* spoiler!).Jimmy's been in love with Judy all of his life, their parents having apparently been friends for quite some time, but that love has been unrequited until now.
He finally approaches Judy to show her how he's taken revenge on those that have wronged her in school (herself also being a social outcast, apparently) causing her to instantly fall in love with him.The remainder of the film is a high tension tale of the love between the two star-crossed lovers and the misadventures they become entangled in as they explore a life of crime and independence.
Jimmy is a first or second year college student suspended from school due to an incident involving his videotaping craze (at least partly to blame for his severe emotional scarring) and Judy is a high school junior or senior and their relationship is typical of that of late teenage/early twenties relationships when it comes to the sexual element (at least from my own personal perspective), so I'm sure you can figure out roughly what to expect.The film is a love story...
It's a very fast-moving story once things really get to happening and I soon found myself totally engrossed.I'm running out of words here, sadly, and I doubt I'm doing the film quite the justice it is deserved.
All I really do have to say, in the end, is that I truly hope that this film gets picked up for distribution (I believe it was mentioned that this has already happened, or is definitely in the works) and if you get any chance to see it, I highly recommend that you do.
And the writing is dull at best; every scene is PAINFULLY transparent in its intended character or plot development and basic, simple points in the setup of the story (why is Judy so horribly harassed at school?) go entirely ignored.Lacking any real style or purpose and with an irritating, smug arrogance, "Jimmy and Judy" is a self-indulgent parade of predictability and shocking images with no real counter-point.
Jimmy and Judy This clever, heartfelt piece of gonzo indie film-making is the movie Natural Born Killers should have been.
In the first reel, this conceit works a tad like Bogart's character just out of prison in Elmer Daves' Dark Passage, with the subjective camera point-of-view employed until after plastic surgery.Jimmy (a great turn by former child star Edward Furlong, whose career seems to be headed in the right direction again) reveals himself only in the presence of Judy (Rachael Bella).
He woos Judy by exacting revenge on the kids who have bullied her at school, films his parents' gender-switching sex, and, in a very funny piece of Americana, freaks out in a fast-food car lane after pickles are improperly included with his double cheeseburger.They hit the road for their obligatory crime spree.
When I saw this title I thought, Woo hoo another crappy film to watch and then to comment on, but what I didn't know was the reality of this movie was so real that it made me think really hard of what this world is like for kids who are not blessed to have parents and friend's to care for them.After watching this movie I found my self in a daze, sorta like a trance (something I always find myself in when watching these kind of movies') and I knew that all the things that Jimmy and Judy went through were things that could and DO happen to teenagers ever day.
I now know that life can be hell and that without someone to talk about it to you, you can really go crazy.People need to look outside of their own home and see what happened's when kids (mostly teenagers) can do with one gun a camera and a misunderstood life..
After watching this movie at the best screening I have ever been at, I was left thinking about this film for days.
I really connected with the characters, and fell in love with Jimmy and Judy.
Jimmy & Judy overcomes it's limitations to be a film I'd definitely recommend even if intriguingly it points to greater things that it never achieves.It's the first time I've seen a film filmed entirely from a first person point of view and I found this very striking.
It stuck me watching me Jimmy & Judy just how rich the possibilities are here, developed further it could become a new genre of film.
It's a tribute to the skill of the directors that all of this works as smoothly as it does.As other reviewers have pointed out another arresting feature of this film is the chemistry between to the two characters, fortuitously helped by the fact there was real off screen chemistry there as they actually ended up getting married in real life.
So hence Jimmy & Judy's Bonnie & Clyde style crime spree becomes a little, how can I say this, done so many times before.
Jimmy & Judy is one of the lesser known direct-to-video films he's done and with good cause.
From the cover this film looks like some modern version of Bonnie & Clyde and it's from the writers behind Natural Born Killers, so I was expecting good things.
The whole first half of the movie features a ton of sex and nudity and plays like a really high end porno, from there the story gets a little better, but not by much.
Edward Furlong co-stars in the film "Jimmy and Judy" as a junior-college dropout plagued by the deceptively normal facade of suburbia and obsessed with his hand-held video camera.Jimmy's camera thus becomes the lens for the entire film.
Jimmy has loved Judy (Rachael Bella) since childhood, and has the tapes to prove it.
When Jimmy, never one to let social norms hinder his impulses, takes revenge on Judy's bullies and shows her the footage, she is wooed and the two embark on an anarchic ride through the forgotten states of Middle America.Throughout their misadventures- ones involving drug abuse, sexual violence, and gunplay- Jimmy and Judy manage to retain an innocence not afforded to characters in flicks with similar concepts such as "Natural Born Killers." What provides this naive sincerity is the rare chemistry Furlong and Bella invoke coupled with the film's intimate home-video style.
At first, Judy repeatedly asks, "Why do you have to film everything?" Jimmy just wants to document all the important parts of his life.
This movie is hard core indie, so don't bother to watch if you are expecting some cheesy happy ending and are not prepared to be shocked.Jimmy and Judy, for better or worse, is in your face and not afraid to to be there.
The trailer makes it look good, like a typical bonnie & Clyde movie.However it wants to be to much like true romance or natural born killers In the way that the two characters care for nothing but each other and would rather die than be apart.some of the camera work is a bit amateurish too.
Jimmy and Judy is one of the most original movies I ever saw.I watched it a week ago and I was so impressed by this movie.First of all,both main and supporting characters were played perfectly and this person one view is just awesome.Story is pretty good,sick kid filming everything he think is important and it's almost every moment of his life.He met this girl played by beautiful Rachel Bella and they start their weird road trip.Movie is very realistic and shows examples society is trying to hide from public.I can say it's a must see movie that will make think about it for next two days.I didn't think this will be something extraordinary when I started watching it,I knew it's a low-budget and independent movie and I didn't expect too much from it.But it came out as a big surprise.But,even though movie is great I can't say it's ideal and i'll give it 9 out of ten..
Spoilers over.Final thoughts: Skip Jimmy and Judy unless you want to laugh at a horrible story, boring and pointless directing, and Ed Furlong looking like a fool..
There are times that Furlong's (as Jimmy) acting goes on and off like a light switch – probably equally as good as it was bad.
Then there's Bella (as Judy) whose acting more resembles a strobe light, again with both good and bad performances, only in her case it's within seconds.
'Jimmy & Judy' really isn't an original idea, aside from, of course, updating 'The Doom Generation,' 'National Born Killers' and of course, 'Bonnie & Clyde,' to the U-tube generation – i.e. the entire movie was shot via hand-held cameras.
He's infatuated with Judy who doesn't like Jimmy, then does.
The movie does have some shocks – not to spoil, as it was foretold to audience, it was still a surprise scene when Judy's life of crime really begins.The #1 thing that did freak me out, as this mirrors the myspace/utube generation, is that I actually saw a true life story like this unfold on Myspace in 2006 in the case of Jacob D.
Jimmy and Judy is far from one of these films.
Jimmy and Judy push the envelope in all that they do, and the film follows the same suit.
Jimmy and Judy,a well-made semi-remake of "Badlands" with some "Natural Born Killers" thrown in for good measure, isn't a bad time at the movies, to be sure, but also isn't near as good as it should be.I caught the world premiere of this movie at SF Indie, and I can certainly see why they picked it - edgy, counterculture, chock full of sex and violence.
But ultimately, the film goes nowhere, with characters that neither illicit compassion nor interest, and a story which seems to meander, predictability, to a place that has nothing really to do with either Jimmy or Judy.
Apparently, just because they're young, sweaty, unkempt, swear and screw a lot, they get to be angry and rebellious.The one moderately original thing about the film is that Jimmy videotapes everything (this is not a spoiler - it's evident in the trailer and from frame 1 of the movie), and this is used as a narrative device ala "Blair Witch".
Kinda nifty, but still, nothing else in the movie - either Furlong's character nor the story, pay this off in any way, and ultimately, it doesn't make sense.If you like angst for angst's sake, this is for you.
Compared to those films, however, this one suffers from lengthy unexciting intervals.Jimmy's (Edward Furlong) constant video documentation of his life is a throw-in gimmick, though it is well accomplished.
A far more charming aspect that elevates this film from mediocrity is the authentic aura of infatuation between Jimmy and his girlfriend Judy (Rachael Bella).
It was the real thing: the two actors did fall in love while making this film and married; their first child, a son, was just born (on September 21, 2006).With splendid cameos by Chaney Kley as an intoxicated meth-head and William Sadler as Uncle Rodney, the predatory leader of a drug besotted commune.
Jimmy & Judy left me disappointed because I did not find anything original in the movie.
While watching the movie many other better flicks similar to this one, came into my mind like Natural Born Killers, Badlands, Kalifornia etc.And I kept on hoping that there may be some twist in the plot but nothing happened.
Both Jimmy and Judy looked normal teens acting weirdly !I don't know why?
The movie is a dark look at how far teens will go for their crazy definitions of love.
JIMMY AND JUDY 2006 Written and Directed by Randall Rubin and Jon Schroeder (We Share Everything!) Starring Edward Furlong, Rachael Bella, William Sadler, James Eckhouse, Gay Storm and A.
The latter film is sooooooo much better than the former.Jimmy and Judy is (shockingly!) the story of Jimmy (Edward Furlong) and Judy (Rachael Rubin).
Judy, while initially repelled by Jimmy, eventually warms up to the only person she thinks loves her or pays attention to her.
The movie spends about an hour just defining these characters and their relationship, then Judy runs over a guy with their car.
The movie is shot hand-held video style, with the camera being passed back and forth between Jimmy and Judy, but unlike The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, this movie won't make you motion sick.
The camera work in Jimmy and Judy is much steadier and more like a traditional film than the herky-jerky visual roller-coaster of those other two.
That distance, in turn, let's you see that Jimmy and Judy aren't very realistic characters.
While Furlong and Bella both give nice performances, you can't ever forget they're performances.The second half of the movie is also problematic because it stops being about Jimmy and Judy and starts being about all these other low-life, criminal types they run into.
The things that occur in the second hour of the story don't really flow out of who Jimmy and Judy are and how they relate to each other, but instead erupt when new characters enter the story and push our lovebirds in one direction or another.
When it's just Jimmy and Judy in the first half, what happens mostly makes sense.
There's a point in the story where Jimmy by all rights should be killed, but instead he's just beaten up a bit and allowed to live solely because the movie isn't ready to end yet.For all that, though, Jimmy and Judy isn't an aggressively bad film.
Furlong and Bella are good, there's a significant amount of female nudity (including a lot of looks at Bella's bosom) and if you've ever had a bit of Holden Caulfield in you when you were young, you might emotionally connect with this story.But as I mention at the start, Video X is sooooooo much better than this film.
But if you can't get your hands on a copy of Video X, Jimmy and Judy isn't that awful as a substitute..
After all, Natural born killers is the same thing, but filmed differently.
There's one thing about this movie you can compare is that In both stories, the killer couple is consisted of 2 lovebirds who believe they are hated, unwanted, abused, and neglected by everyone, and everything...