There’s a scene in “Jimmy” where the actor James Stewart (KJ Apa) goes on a little rendezvous with Lady Julia (Kara Killmer), an aristocratic Brit he’s met while fighting for the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II.
They take refuge under a bridge while it rains, trading secrets and lightly flirting well into the night. At one point, Lady Julia asks James – Jimmy, if you will – if the real James Stewart is as earnest, dear, and courageous as the characters he plays in movies.
There’s a lot to suggest that the real James Stewart, who is among one of the most popular classic Hollywood actors of all time, might have been as likeable as he pre-war movie persona would lead you to believe (post-war is a different story – the James Stewart of “Vertigo” is very different from the James Stewart of “The Philadelphia Story.”) But, there’s also a heck of a lot to suggest that he – like any human being – was complicated. And “Jimmy” is absolutely uninterested in that complication, preferring to keep the man a myth – or, more accurately, a cartoonish, bumbling superhero.
Directed by Aaron Burns and written by Justin Strawhand, “Jimmy” is the latest in a long, seemingly never-ending series of biopics about famous people where the actor playing said famous person endures a minor physical transformation and sort of learns how to do their voice – and we’re all supposed to be very impressed by that fact. Some of these films are less offensive than others, but “Jimmy” is among the worst of them. It looks flat and uncanny, characterized by a surface level, sanitized exploration of one of America’s most canonized actors, and led by an ill-conceived performance.
“Jimmy” follows the actor from the height of his fame pre-war through his decision to enlist in World War II (he was the first major American movie star to do so), and then through his military service and the filming of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the first film he made after returning home.
In addition to his romance with Lady Julia – a composite character meant to represent various romantic relationships that Stewart had before he met his wife, Gloria – Stewart’s time in the war makes up the bulk of the film. By all accounts, Stewart suffered from severe PTSD when he returned from the war, and “Jimmy” attempts to show us the moments in the air and the comrades lost that caused that. The effect, however, feels more like a bad video game than combat. The environments are not physical and horribly rendered, the muddy visual effects taking over what should be the sharp shock of war. Visually, there’s nothing to draw you in, nothing to make you feel the horror that Stewart and the rest of the pilots must have experienced.
Everything about “Jimmy” just skims the surface, particularly the film’s version of its main character. Throughout the film, Jimmy struggles with not just the war, but whether or not he is a good man – the type of man Lady Julia has seen him play in his films. This could have been an interesting character beat, but Jimmy as he’s presented to us is nothing short of perfect for the entire film. His one brush with moral ambiguity comes when his superior (Rob Riggle) tells him that he has to break the news to the rest of his crew that the number of missions they’re expected to fly will increase. Jimmy turns on the charm, invigorating his team with a patriotic speech that he doesn’t quite believe. But this isn’t enough to make us doubt his goodness – he too has to fly more missions, so he’s not asking anyone to take any risk that he doesn’t have to.
Everything we see of Jimmy in the film presents him as a wonderful guy – the type of guy who tried to settle down with Ginger Rogers (Jemma Donovan) before heading off to war, who tried to enlist in the army even before Pearl Harbor, who was willing to put his life on the line for others. Some of this might be true (I can’t find any evidence that he proposed to Rogers – although he did ask Olivia de Havilland to marry him), but by only choosing to portray Stewart as a saint among men, the film becomes trite and boring. There are plenty of stories about Jimmy Stewart that don’t fit this particular vision of purity – the fallout from his alleged affair with actress Marlene Dietrich, his unfounded blame for his co-star Donna Reed when “It’s a Wonderful Life” initially failed at the box office. Far be it from me to tell a screenwriter which anecdotes to include, but the movie is so uninterested in anything about James Stewart that might make him seem like less than a paragon – and therefore, it’s uninterested in anything that makes him seem human at all.
That extends to Apa’s performance, which is the final nail in the coffin for the film. Apa does a respectable impression of Stewart’s signature drawl, but imitating a voice and affecting a physicality doesn’t necessarily a great performance make. The script doesn’t give him much to work with, but Apa goes far too big most of the time, coming off as a one-dimensional, cartoonishly folksy version of Stewart and failing to capture any of the actor’s eccentricity, charisma, or naturalism.
Towards the end of the film, we speed through Stewart’s struggles filming “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In one scene – the scene where George Bailey cries at Martini’s Bar while praying to God for help – Jimmy is having a particularly difficult time finding the feeling the scene necessitates. He finally gets there, imagining the ghosts of his fallen comrades standing in place of the film crew as tears, unbidden, appear in his eyes. Never minding the fact that the ghosts look ridiculous, the audience is supposed to recognize this moment as some sort of personal and professional breakthrough. But it pales in comparison to the original scene, failing to convince us that what we’re watching is worthy of its subject.
