Rubber Johnny
Rubber Johnny
| 25 February 2005 (USA)
Rubber Johnny Trailers

An experimental music video about a wheelchair-bound boy who morphs and moves to an Aphex Twin song. The experience gets weirder when he takes cocaine and everything gets out of control.

Reviews
Stonedwithoutdope

Altogether this is an enjoyable little movie but you can really enjoy it if you imagine it as real life footage. Chris Cunningham and his crew make this out as if they are filming actual footage of a deformed teenager and if you know the back story it can strike your brain as fairly disturbing. They do it well.This shows footage of a severely deformed super flexible teenager living in solitude in his dark basement where his parents keep him due to being ashamed of him. All he has for company is his frightened dog. This will show his reaction to someone trying to get through to him and a little dance number to keep himself occupied in his dull life.Overall this is a great little enjoyable film and spooky at that. Bravo Chris Cunningham, you rock.

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jer__66

"Rubber Johnny" begins with you asking yourself "what is going on?", and ends with you asking yourself "what just happened?".The positive that can be brought out of Rubber Johnny is simply that it is original. Now that being said, it is original in the worst of ways.A mix of cheap effects (however original), and a very poor foundation make Rubber Johnny a complete bust. One watching this for the first time, would think it was done by a couple of 10 year olds just fooling around and experimenting with a home video camera.But for the short amount of time it takes to watch it, check it out and see what I mean.

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bikerpug

This short film has a "night vision" appearance, that is it looks like it was filmed in darkness with a infra-red camera. It starts with a blurry twisted "thing" speaking gibberish in a dark cellar, while a voice attempts to converse with it. Soon the "thing" becomes agitated and must be sedated.The faceless voice leaves, and a broken florecent light flickers as a small dog walks nerviously looking at the strange being in the wheelchair. Then you get a good look at the twisted creature, a distorted nude humanoid in a wheel chair with a huge bulging head mouthing bizarre sounds. Then it starts to get weird....

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Per A.

I guess my main beef with "Rubber Johnny" is that it is a freak show: a weird crippled child dances for the audience. The style/design explored territory covered during the goth/ industrial scene since the 90's. The filmmaker is obviously talented - but I didn't find the film either shocking or entertaining, just obnoxious. The whole marketing and experience of the film had the subtext: "There's this weird pale mutant in the basement. Isn't that cool??" I guess the concept of a freak show put me off. All of that said, Cunningham is a genuine talent - and apparently has good marketers behind him. So, hope to hear and see more from him in the future.

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