Jimmy review

Jimmy is basically a hagiography of Jimmy Stewart. That sounds like I'm opening with a criticism, but I'm not. If this movie taught me anything, it's that if anybody deserves a hagiography, Jimmy Stewart does.

This is a pleasant, very sincere movie about a man who walked away from being one of the biggest stars in America because he believed he had an obligation to serve, spent years flying combat missions against the Nazis, came home carrying things he didn't want to talk about, and then somehow turned part of that experience into one of the defining performances of his career.

KJ Apa plays Stewart from just after his Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, through World War II, and back to Hollywood for It's a Wonderful Life. Stewart entered the Army in 1941, before Pearl Harbor. He was initially rejected for being underweight and had to get himself over the minimum to try again. He was already an experienced civilian pilot, which eventually led him into the Army Air Corps.

The military would have been perfectly happy to use Jimmy Stewart as Jimmy Stewart. One of the most famous actors in the country has obvious value for propaganda, recruiting and training films. Stewart wanted to actually serve. His father and grandfather had both served, and the movie makes a lot of that family obligation. He fought his way into an overseas assignment, commanded a B-24 bomber squadron, flew 20 combat missions over Europe and finished the war as a colonel. So the movie has a remarkable true story to work with before it embellishes anything.

The film spends close to half its runtime overseas, and I found that useful. I knew Stewart had served, but I didn't appreciate the extent of it. He wasn't a celebrity flown around to make appearances. He was leading men into combat, men under his command were being killed, and he kept flying missions even after moving into command positions where he didn't have to.

For me, though, the more interesting part is what happens after he comes home.

The film presents Stewart as deeply affected by the war, struggling with anxiety, guilt and emotions he doesn't know what to do with. We'd probably call much of it PTSD today, though there apparently isn't a medical record establishing that. What is clear is that he came home changed, rarely discussed what he'd been through and didn't immediately know whether he wanted to keep acting. His daughter has said the war affected him more deeply than anything else in his life.

That's where Frank Capra, played by Max Casella, comes back into his life with the project that becomes It's a Wonderful Life. The movie makes a deliberate argument that playing George Bailey gave Stewart somewhere to put all the anger, fear and exhaustion he'd brought home from Europe.

That's the most interesting idea in the movie. If you've seen It's a Wonderful Life a hundred times, you know how much darkness is in that performance. George Bailey isn't just a warm Christmas character. He's angry, desperate, frightened and at points completely falling apart. Jimmy suggests some of that was Stewart himself coming through.

Take the famous scene where George sits in Martini's bar and prays because he's reached the end of his rope. Jimmy treats it almost as a collision between Stewart and the character. The prayer wasn't improvised, as I'd assumed. It was in the script. But Stewart later said that while delivering it he became genuinely overwhelmed and started crying, and that part was completely unplanned. Capra knew he wasn't likely to get that emotion twice, so he enlarged the existing shot rather than ask for another take. It's a great story, and it supports what the movie is trying to say about the connection between the war and the performance.

As a movie, Jimmy is competently done. I wouldn't call it great. It is extremely reverential toward Stewart, sometimes to the point of sainthood, but I didn't mind that here. The underlying facts are extraordinary enough that the movie doesn't have to work very hard to make him admirable. Even critics who don't like the film have acknowledged that this is an unusually compelling stretch of Stewart's life.

KJ Apa is completely committed. He's got the voice, the cadence, the posture and all the strange little mannerisms that make a Stewart performance immediately recognizable. He clearly studied him closely, and the impression is very good. Other critics have been more enthusiastic than I was, with some arguing he almost disappears into Stewart.

My issue is that I never quite forgot I was watching KJ Apa do an extremely studied Jimmy Stewart impression. There's a difference between reproducing someone's voice and mannerisms and making me feel like I'm watching that person. Apa gets much closer on the first than the second. I wanted a little more emotional looseness. I wanted the performance to stop feeling performed.

I also wanted stronger chemistry between Stewart and the people around him. The best relationship in the film is between Jimmy and his father, Alexander, played by Neal McDonough. There's warmth there, and you feel the weight of his father's expectations and the family's history of service. I didn't get as much from the rest, including the men he serves with and especially the romances. The movie tells me these people matter enormously to Stewart, but I don't always feel it on screen, and by the time it wants us invested in his relationship with Gloria, I don't think it has earned the payoff. The supporting cast is fine. Apa just didn't generate the kind of chemistry that would make those relationships feel essential.

This seems like exactly the sort of movie that disappears quickly and turns up on streaming later. If you can catch it theatrically, I think it's worth seeing. It isn't a great movie, but it tells a genuinely fascinating story about someone who, as it turns out, may have been even more admirable off screen than the characters that made him famous.