The Boy in the Plastic Bubble

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Boy in the Plastic Bubble is a 1976 made-for-TV movie. The film centers on the life of Tod Lubitch (John Travolta), who was born with an improperly functioning immune system. This means that contact with unfiltered air may kill him, so he must live out his life in incubator-like conditions. He lives with his parents, since they decided to move him from Texas Children's Hospital where he was being kept as a boy. He is constricted to staying in his room all his life, where he eats, learns, reads and exercises, while being protected from the outside world by various coverings.


Tropes used in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble include:
  • Bubble Boy: The title Character
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Robert "Mike Brady" Reed as the dad!
  • Riff Trax
  • Situational Sexuality: There's a part of the film where Tod spends time in a hospital with another boy named Roy. Roy is Todd's age and shares his condition who seems a little too happy to have a bunk mate and won't really talk about anything other than masturbation and/or sex. And how he wants to have sex with everything. EVERYTHING.
  • Stalking Is Love: Tod watches Gina through binoculars which is ether endearing or weird.
  • The Woobie: You can't help but feel a little bad for Tod.