Blair Hayes
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Although the idea for Blair Hayes's Bubble Boy seems initially like a lame offshoot of the "bubble boy" episode of Seinfeld (which itself probably derived from the comically weepy 1976 TV movie The Boy In The Plastic Bubble starring a pre-Saturday Night Fever John Travolta in melodramatic overdrive), it is actually much different.
While no one has lived their entire life in a bubble since David Vetter - whose story inspired the TV movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" with John Travolta - a certain stigma has remained attached to the condition, leading to the now famous/infamous "Bubble Boy" episode of TV's "Seinfeld."
The use of circus freaks is being construed as mean spirited, but these misshapen folk are good and caring (and, yes, funny) characters, much the same way Alfred Hitchcock depicted them in "Saboteur" (1942).
("Patches?" says Slim. "I could use some stinking patches!" in homage to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.")
It's the sort of role that probably would have gone to Brendan Fraser had he not already done "Blast From the Past" and one in which a younger Johnny Depp could have done wonders with (after remembering him doing something somewhat similar in "Edward Scissorhands").
Adorned with the spiky hair and distancing false arms of "Edward Scissorhands," Gyllenhaal (a much wiser casting choice than the more obvious Brendan Fraser) makes us feel his innocent joy at seeing grass and walking outside in his clear spherical suit.
The style of this film is not unlike Pee-wee's Big Adventure, as it follows a comically innocent weirdo around the country, through all sorts of strange adventures and characters.
First you’ve got your Bubble Boy riffs in which the tragically ill teenager finds out that their single parent has been lying to them and they were never sick after all.
The romance is just a plot contrivance for the hero's amazing journey and "The Graduate" parody climax is obvious, but the wrap-up does provides a few character revelation chuckles.
Ken Daurio's ("Bubble Boy," "Horton Hears a Who!") script and the story by animator Sergio Pablos owe a lot to Pixar's "Monsters, Inc.," where one half of some dueling 'bad' guys (Sulley and Mike, whose simple design seems like a prototype for Gru's minions, vs. Randall Boggs) are undone by a little girl (Boo, whom Agnes, the youngest here, is obviously modeled on) and "Up," where a cranky old guy ends up performing a mid-air rescue of a youngster who previously bugged him.