The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976) on Netflix
PG19761h 36mBiographyDramaRomance
Born without a working immune system, Tod Lubitch lives sealed inside plastic chambers in his parents' Houston home. He wants the world outside, and Gina Biggs lives next door.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb5.8/106,090 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Johnny and Mickey Lubitch have already lost a son to an immune system that did not work when Mickey gives birth to Tod. Doctors warn the parents that the boy may spend his whole life in incubator-like conditions, and his first four years pass in a hospital. Mickey convinces Johnny to bring him home, and the family settles in Houston. Tod's room is his world: he eats, reads, studies and exercises there, sealed off by plastic chambers that hold bacteria and viruses out. Gloved hands are his only human contact. Now a teenager, he longs for more than his room allows, and a link to his local high school lets him sit in on classes. Next door lives Gina Biggs.
Cast
- Skip Lowellas Bruce Shuster
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- David Vetter, the real boy who inspired the film, questioned how sterile Tod's use of the spacesuit was. He scoffed at the idea that John Travolta's character could simply wear the spacesuit back into the isolator without contaminating the bubble.
- The phrase "in the bubble," used in American presidential politics, was traced by William Safire to Peggy Noonan's 1990 memoir What I Saw at the Revolution, where she used it about Ronald Reagan's "wistfulness about connection." Noonan's use was a reference to The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.
- Paul Simon's 1985 song "The Boy in the Bubble" was inspired by the film and its underlying story, using the boy's survival as an example of how we live an "age of miracle and wonder."
- John Travolta and Diana Hyland began a six-month romantic relationship after the film ended principal photography, a relationship that lasted until her death.
