All he needs is love.
1993-09-01
$0.8M
114 min
Bad Boy Bubby is just that: a bad boy. So bad, in fact, that his mother has kept him locked in their house for his entire thirty years, convincing him that the air outside is poisonous. After a visit from his estranged father, circumstances force Bubby into the waiting world, a place which is just as unusual to him as he is to the world.
We see the world through the eyes of a childlike man who has been imprisoned in a squalid house since birth, ignorant of and terrified by stories of the outside and completely reliant on his mother, who beats and makes love to him. We see him forced into the outside world by the return of his parasitic and presumably itinerant father, who wants his place in the home again. This childlike man, Bubby, realises that the outside world is not what he was made to believe it is and so begins his voyage of discovery.
Through Bubby's eyes we can see a (slightly crazy) city from a naive perspective and it is this sense of wonder and discovery that defines the film. Bubby is not a clean slate, though. His past is extremely messed up and this is never forgotten in his characterisation. So he gets frustrated and angry as well as joyous and excited. The acting is phenomenal, it really is. This ain't Forest Gump, not to knock that film but this is next level documtary footage tier.
There's not much of a plot other than Bubby goes from A to Z via every stop along the way. He finds love and learns that it is all. There are a couple of incredibly touching scenes that are genuinely beautiful and, as far as I can tell, not acted. It's a very philosophical film and explicitly encourages an open and critical mind in several scenes,
An incredible masterpiece in my eyes, with many unforgettable scenes and several that you will not have seen the likeness of before.
