JIMMY (2026)

            “Jimmy” is a biopic of Jimmy Stewart that focuses on his role in WWII. It was directed by Aaron Burns who is noted for his faith-based films. It cost $14 million. The movie features a cameo from Karolyn Grimes who played Zuzu Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” One of the executive producers was Stewart’s daughter Kelly Stewart Harcourt. She also has a cameo. Her involvement means the family was pleased with the film. And not upset with the historical license.

            The film is bookended by the making of “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Five years earlier, Jimmy Stewart (KJ Apa) is coming off a Best Actor Oscar for “The Philadelphia Story”. He receives a draft notice and when he informs Louis B. Mayer (Jason Alexander) of MGM, Mayer tells his moneymaker that he’ll take care of it. Surprise, Jimmy wants to serve. He enlists in the Army Air Corps as a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot. The movie foregoes the traditional training sequence and sends Stewart’s bomber group across the Atlantic to Great Britain. They lose a bomber to enemy fire during the trip. Danger established. On his first mission, his bomber is hit by flak, but Jimmy pulls it out of a death dive and resumes his position in the formation. This is a clue that the screenwriter is going to be using the historical license excuse.

            Stewart will end up flying 20 missions, but the movie covers only a few. This is because it has to find time for Jimmy’s romance with an upper-class British woman. Julia (Kara Kilmer) will have to deal with her beau’s increasing PTSD. Jimmy returns home in 1945 and is not mentally ready to return to acting. His friend, director Frank Kapra (Max Casella) talks him into making “It’s a Wonderful Life”. It’s not going to be like get back  on a bike.

            Two minutes into the movie, I wrote in my notes “hokey?” The next two hours proved the answer to that question was a resounding “yes!” However, I don’t think that will be a dealbreaker for most people who go to see this movie. BTW based on the audience I saw it with, those people will be mostly the elderly. I am in that demographic, but I am also a hardcore war movie fanatic. So, if you are reading this review, I feel you will probably find it hokey. For instance, when Jimmy’s co-pilot shows him a picture of his girlfriend, I don’t think many of my fellow audience members knew he was dead meat. But all my readers will know it. I don’t know if the screenwriter doesn’t know this cliché or he didn’t think his core audience would know it. And part of the hokeyness are the religious moments in the film. The movie does not jam Christianity down the viewers’ throats, but it is not subtle either.

            Jimmy Stewart is one of my favorite actors and he is one of my favorite historical figures. And not to overuse the word hokey, it does fit his personality and many of the characters he played. Apa does a good job impersonating him. If you haven’t seen many of Stewart’s movies, you might find the performance to be a bit hammy. It doesn’t help that the rest of the cast thinks they are in a play. Alexander plays the caricature of a villainous Hollywood studio boss. Rob Riggle is wooden as the gruff bomber boss. Stewart’s crew is all “aww shucks”. It was a poor decision to use Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist, as a framing device. Her appearances in the narrative are annoying.

            The film suffers from one of the biggest problems of the series “Masters of the Air”. There is not enough time spent on missions. There is just enough to show that the CGI is average and not distractingly bad. The interior scenes in the bomber are embarrassingly unrealistic. There is little that will inform you about the air war. There is one poignant loss, but the movie only implies the high level of losses by having a pilot complain that nobody cares. Instead of the more obvious “how the hell do they expect us to get to 30 missions?!” Jimmy certainly cares. Too much, as Patton would have sniffed. He ends up with justifiable PTSD which creates the template for the postwar scenes. This is a bit trite, but does accurately reflect Stewart’s rough road after the war.

            A movie like “Jimmy” has to be judged partly on its adherence to history and realism. I read a book about Stewart’s WWII experiences, but that was year’s ago so I was not sure what parts were accurate. “Jimmy” is the kind of movie where I am watching and constantly saying to myself, “That can’t possibly be true.” I’m often surprised that some of the most unlikely plot developments are actually true. This is not the case in this movie. However, if you want to see the movie, don’t read beyond this point and don’t look at the grade because it is one letter lower because of veracity problems (as are pointed out in the historical accuracy section below).

            “Jimmy” is the kind of old school Hollywood film (actually closer to a Hallmark movie) that critics will sneer at but audiences will enjoy. It’s the only movie we will get about the most heroic actor that served in WWII so it will have to do. And if it gets people to dust off some of his movies that will be great because he is on the Mount Rushmore of American male actors.

 

GRADE  =  C-

 

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  Louis B. Mayer did try to dissuade Stewart from enlisting and although the movie makes him into a villain, he certainly was right as far as MGM was concerned. Compare Stewart to other stars, like John Wayne, who dodged service for legitimate reasons. Stewart’s service is close to Clark Gable’s with Gable flying a few missions as a gunner, but mostly making films for the military. Stewart’s best friend, Henry Fonda, also enlisted and served in the Navy. Stewart was the earliest big star to enlist and significantly did it 8 months before Pearl Harbor. The film oddly does not cover the lengths Stewart went to get in. He failed the first physical because he was underweight at 6’3”, but only 138 pounds. He had to eat a special diet to get to the weight for the second attempt. The movie does not indicate that he was an accomplished pilot already. He spent the first year making films, including “Winning Your Wings” which is mentioned in the movie. He also trained other pilots. He pushed hard for an overseas assignment which definitely showed he was a patriot. No bombers were lost on the transatlantic trip. The movie bizarrely describes the trip as “over the German-controlled North Atlantic”. The implication that a bomber was shot down by a u-boat is laughable. The first mission was to a u-boat facility, but the damaging of his bomber and rejoining the formation did not happen. He did have a mission where they had engine trouble and had to return to base. The bomber that took its place as leader was shot down with the loss of the crew. Stewart suffered from survivor’s guilt which contributed to his PTSD.  The mission where he tried to convince another squadron that it was taking the wrong route is the closest the movie comes to the truth. Stewart did make the decision to follow with his squadron to support the idiot who was way off in his navigation. They did pass over Paris. This was the mission which earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross. He did get promoted to Major and then Colonel, making him a very rare private to colonel in four years. The crew was fictionalized. He did not have a set bomber or crew. He flew on various bombers, often as mission leader in the co-pilot’s chair. There was no incident where a bomber he had flown in crashed when he had not been able to pilot it. There was an incident where his flight engineer went AWOL, so his bomber had to stay home. The bomber that took its place was shot down. This was additional survivor’s guilt. The movie has Stewart waiting for his bomber to come back. It would have been more appropriate to stick to the truth of the stressful times Stewart waited for his group to return. In one raid, the group lost 13 of 25  bombers. He did have a mission where flak blew a hole in the floor of the cockpit. When he returned to America, he did go through a time when he thought about giving up Hollywood to work in his father’s store. It is true that Frank Capra (who spent the war making the acclaimed “Why We Fight” documentaries) convinced him to make “It’s a Wonderful Life”. It was both their first films after the war. The movie correctly mentions that the movie was not a hit. Stewart did have a tough time making the film and he did channel some of his PTSD into his best performance. He received an Oscar nomination for it.

            The movie lays religion on a bit thick, but it is true that Stewart was a religious man. His father did give him a pocket Bible/Psalms. As far as his romances, he did not propose to Ginger Rogers. They had dated a while, but that was in 1935. The Julia character stands in for the mysterious British woman who he dated for a while. He never revealed who she was.