The young-lovers-in-crime sub-genre gets another rowdy little entry in the form of Jimmy and Judy, a very familiar and strained conceit that skates by thinly on the strength of its committed performances.



On its packaging, the film bills itself as a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde, and touts blurbs calling it the movie that Natural Born Killers wanted to be, or should have been, and, yes, the whole lusty us-against-the-world theme is there, and ripely explored. Yet a better point of reference might well be Ben Coccio’s 2003 independent flick Zero Day. In that film — an only loosely serialized mock-up of the Columbine tragedy — as here, the real issue under the microscope is teeth-gnashing teen alienation, no matter the gender trap or romanticized obfuscations.

Co-written and directed by Randall Rubin and Jon Schroder, the movie centers on social misfit/amateur video enthusiast Jimmy (Edward Furlong) and the impressionable Judy (The Ring‘s Rachel Bella, above), a young pair of spirited, new teen lovers who leave behind their comfortably numb suburban community in search of a better life in… rural Kentucky? (Bad choice, kids.) Sort of wildly naked in its willful provocation (Judy tonguing a shotgun barrel, for instance, and James Eckhouse cavorting about in S&M gear), Jimmy and Judy doesn’t exert a whole lot of effort in coming up with new triggers and circumstances for our teen antiheroes’ acting out in increasingly criminal fashion, nor does it work psychologically plumb these situations in many new or interesting ways.

So yes, that means on-the-run hair dying and head-shaving ensues, along with diatribes about “conformist crimeless virginity,” and how no one can understand Jimmy and Judy like one another. (William Sadler also costars, in loony cameo fashion.) What sells this well-worn plot to a small degree is Furlong, who gives an unhinged turn. I’d love to say it was darkly mesmerizing or revelatory, but that’s not really the truth about this performance; it works because Furlong, bloated and bleary-eyed, is obviously a young man given to certain excesses in his personal life, and this fact helps blur the line between fact and fiction for Jimmy and Judy. Oh, and though she’s not a great actress, for the prurient, the movie does feature Bella, from behind, running naked in a field, as well as other assorted bits of topless nudity.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Jimmy and Judy comes presented in anamorphic widescreen, with two different versions (rated and unrated) of its trailer, and a feature-length audio commentary track in which co-directors Schroder and Rubin are joined by cinematographer Ben Kufrin. Together, they recount the movie’s hometown location shoot (Schroder and Rubin are Kentucky natives), and shrug off any embarrassment over a scene in which someone in the background is seen taking a picture of Furlong on their camera cell phone. The undeniable high point of the commentary, though, comes when the filmmakers talk about Furlong’s drunken attempt to free lobsters from a local restaurant, and the fact that the police officers who arrested him in real life play cops in the movie, and do the same as extras in an early scene in the film. Thirteen minutes of deleted scenes are also included, the longest of which features the uninterrupted single take of Bella shaving Furlong’s head, replete with all sorts of asides and ad-libs. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)