Do you remember the TV show "Touched by an Angel"? Well, this film could have been titled "Touched by a Homeless Guy with Tourette's Syndrome". It manages to combine cloying sentimentality, an exaggerated faux realism, poor storytelling and a couple of welding montages straight out of an old episode of The A-Team.
Jimmy Zip (Brendan Fletcher) is a dull witted teen who loves to blow stuff up. He runs away from his maniacally abusive foster dad to the streets of LA. There, he hooks up for about 2 minutes with a band of street kids who look like they're auditioning for a remake of 21 Jump Street before getting a job offer from Rick Conseco (Chris Mulkey), one of those pimp/drug dealers who looks like a real estate agent and only exists in the movies. Jimmy works as one of Rick's couriers until he joins the band of street kids in tormenting a homeless guy who lives in a junkyard. While taunting the poor bastard, Jimmy gets caught and the homeless guy ends up with $20,000 of Rick's drug money that Jimmy forgot to deliver.
An enraged Rick sends a couple of thugs with Jimmy to get the money back and when they can't find the homeless guy, the thugs decide to torture Jimmy. Why? Because they're violent idiots. Anyway, the homeless guy saves Jimmy and takes him to another scrap yard, where he suggests Jimmy and he use Rick's money to buy steel and sculpt it into art. After some bonding between Jimmy and the homeless guy, who's named Horace Metcalf (Robert Gossett) and has the sort of Tourette's Syndrome that only comes out exactly when the script needs it to, Jimmy takes the money back to Rick anyway.
I was actually surprised when that happened and it gave me hope this movie might be something worthwhile. Those hopes were dashed pretty quickly. The twist was only so the film could have Jimmy see a street girl named Shelia (Adrienne Frantz) that he liked become one of Rick's whores, then he steals some more of Rick's money and returns to Horace to make metal sculptures. When Jimmy and Horace try to get a snooty art gallery owner to give them their own show, she refuses until Rick threatens her. You see, after tracking down Jimmy and Horace, Rick doesn't kill them for taking his money. No, he decides to let them make their sculptures in the hope that Rick can get his money back by using Shelia to seduce middle-aged guys into buying the artwork. For a pimp/drug dealer, Rick has kind of an esoteric decision-making process.
The gallery show doesn't go quite as planned and Jimmy and Shelia have to race back to the scrap yard, which was apparently right next door to the art gallery, to save Horace from being killed in a car-compactor. Rick and his thugs follow and Jimmy kills them with a giant flame thrower that he and Horace built.
When Jimmy Zip started, it was so goofy I thought it was going to be a parody of the "street kid goes good" genre. I'm sure a lot of the plot I just detailed seems like a parody. Unfortunately, Jimmy Zip is completely straight faced, unironic and non-subversive. It's not a parody. It's not a satire. It's simply another "street kid gone good" movie that goes on far longer than the storytelling of writer/director Robert McGinley can sustain.
There is some decent acting going on here. Adrienne Frantz is quite appealing as Shelia. Robert Gossett keeps Horace from being nothing more than a clichéd caricature, even though that's how the role is written. Brendan Fletcher is totally convincing as a teenage loser, which means he's a good actor or really was a teenage loser. However, Chris Mulkey gives the best performance by far. Until the film turns Rick into every angry crime boss from every bad 1980s action movie, Mulkey gives the character a moral center and a sense of purpose. For most of the movie, I felt that Jimmy would be better off under Rick's guidance. He might be a pimp/drug dealer, but he's rational, reasonable, forgiving and even inadvertently benevolent. Jimmy would have much more likely become a model citizen with Rick than he would with Horace, who resembles a retarded kid that gets treated like a mascot at summer camp.
On the whole, though, Jimmy Zip is too long, too silly, too contrived and too sappy. It's the sort of crap made by sub-mediocre filmmakers when they finally scrounge together enough money and it's the sort of crap made by actors when they can't find any other work. I supposed being in Jimmy Zip was better than waiting tables but not by much.
Jimmy Zip (Brendan Fletcher) is a dull witted teen who loves to blow stuff up. He runs away from his maniacally abusive foster dad to the streets of LA. There, he hooks up for about 2 minutes with a band of street kids who look like they're auditioning for a remake of 21 Jump Street before getting a job offer from Rick Conseco (Chris Mulkey), one of those pimp/drug dealers who looks like a real estate agent and only exists in the movies. Jimmy works as one of Rick's couriers until he joins the band of street kids in tormenting a homeless guy who lives in a junkyard. While taunting the poor bastard, Jimmy gets caught and the homeless guy ends up with $20,000 of Rick's drug money that Jimmy forgot to deliver.
An enraged Rick sends a couple of thugs with Jimmy to get the money back and when they can't find the homeless guy, the thugs decide to torture Jimmy. Why? Because they're violent idiots. Anyway, the homeless guy saves Jimmy and takes him to another scrap yard, where he suggests Jimmy and he use Rick's money to buy steel and sculpt it into art. After some bonding between Jimmy and the homeless guy, who's named Horace Metcalf (Robert Gossett) and has the sort of Tourette's Syndrome that only comes out exactly when the script needs it to, Jimmy takes the money back to Rick anyway.
I was actually surprised when that happened and it gave me hope this movie might be something worthwhile. Those hopes were dashed pretty quickly. The twist was only so the film could have Jimmy see a street girl named Shelia (Adrienne Frantz) that he liked become one of Rick's whores, then he steals some more of Rick's money and returns to Horace to make metal sculptures. When Jimmy and Horace try to get a snooty art gallery owner to give them their own show, she refuses until Rick threatens her. You see, after tracking down Jimmy and Horace, Rick doesn't kill them for taking his money. No, he decides to let them make their sculptures in the hope that Rick can get his money back by using Shelia to seduce middle-aged guys into buying the artwork. For a pimp/drug dealer, Rick has kind of an esoteric decision-making process.
The gallery show doesn't go quite as planned and Jimmy and Shelia have to race back to the scrap yard, which was apparently right next door to the art gallery, to save Horace from being killed in a car-compactor. Rick and his thugs follow and Jimmy kills them with a giant flame thrower that he and Horace built.
When Jimmy Zip started, it was so goofy I thought it was going to be a parody of the "street kid goes good" genre. I'm sure a lot of the plot I just detailed seems like a parody. Unfortunately, Jimmy Zip is completely straight faced, unironic and non-subversive. It's not a parody. It's not a satire. It's simply another "street kid gone good" movie that goes on far longer than the storytelling of writer/director Robert McGinley can sustain.
There is some decent acting going on here. Adrienne Frantz is quite appealing as Shelia. Robert Gossett keeps Horace from being nothing more than a clichéd caricature, even though that's how the role is written. Brendan Fletcher is totally convincing as a teenage loser, which means he's a good actor or really was a teenage loser. However, Chris Mulkey gives the best performance by far. Until the film turns Rick into every angry crime boss from every bad 1980s action movie, Mulkey gives the character a moral center and a sense of purpose. For most of the movie, I felt that Jimmy would be better off under Rick's guidance. He might be a pimp/drug dealer, but he's rational, reasonable, forgiving and even inadvertently benevolent. Jimmy would have much more likely become a model citizen with Rick than he would with Horace, who resembles a retarded kid that gets treated like a mascot at summer camp.
On the whole, though, Jimmy Zip is too long, too silly, too contrived and too sappy. It's the sort of crap made by sub-mediocre filmmakers when they finally scrounge together enough money and it's the sort of crap made by actors when they can't find any other work. I supposed being in Jimmy Zip was better than waiting tables but not by much.
