There’s good cheese (Thunderbirds).
There’s bad cheese (Matrix Reloaded).
Then there’s cheese that smells so bad it could be used for biological warfare.

The Magic Bubble is the last kind of cheese.

(Yep… even though I gave Matrix Reloaded the dreaded one star and derided it - and even called it a contender for the worst film ever - in terms of being awful, it was an amateur compared to this. A gifted amateur perhaps, but still an amateur.)

Starring Diane Salinger and an early rendition of George Clooney that the present incarnation must shudder to contemplate he once was, everyone should watch this film to see just how bad filmmaking can get. The plot is more or less a reverse of the recent 13 going on 30 - this time a married woman stuck in a rut wishes she was 13 again, blows some bubbles, and hey presto! – next morning she’s 13. Well, all apart from her body, which is the same age. Her hubby finds the change puzzling and frustrating, her children begin to identify with her more, and for reasons that shall forever remain the exclusive knowledge of the scriptwriter (assuming there was one), she becomes irresistible to a young man (George Clooney) who seems to have absolutely nothing to occupy his time and thus keeps turning up and trying to chat her up.

The basic plot idea doesn’t actually stink too much, but absolutely nothing imaginative is done with it. The acting is awful, with Clooney simply looking embarrassed to be in this, and I don’t blame him. (Times must have been really bad back then.) I actually felt sorry for him – his performance was nearly average and thus shone out brilliantly against the awfulness of all around him.

So the acting stinks and the plot sucks… but they’re not nearly the worst aspects of the film. There is no characterisation at all, just a collection of tired stereotypes. The direction is odd, cutting from scene to scene a little… strangely. The real joy, however, is the production. The budget may not have been enough to by a whole shoestring, judging by the result, but I wouldn’t hold lack of funds against them if that was the main problem. At least they could have hired a boom holder tall enough to keep the microphones out of shot… The most fun you can have with this film is counting the number of times the mikes come into view and hover near the top of the screen!

Oh, and if you thought the special effects in the original Star Trek series, Blake’s 7, and the cult sci-fi film Dark Star were bad (and let’s face it, they were – but they were imaginatively bad), wait till you see the “effects” in this. Imagine bubbles. Imagine lights. Imagine irritating music. Imagine your brain melting into a pot of grease. You now have some idea of what watching the laughingly called SFX in this film feels like.

There is one redeeming feature to this film – it’s the knowledge that, no matter how hard you try, you’re unlikely to ever watch a worse film than this. (Though I still want to see Plan 9 from Outer Space, held in great esteem by many as the worst film ever made – sometimes films are so bad they’re good… this one, however, is just BAD.) When the most watchable character in the film is the boom mike, you know you’re in trouble…


This was part of the Excellent and Excruciating write off, co-hosted by myself, CaptainD, and Slarter. Guess which half of the WO this one was entered in? :-D

My entry to the other half of the Excellent and Excruciating Write Off is A Beautiful Mind. The (somewhat tenuous) link between the two films is altered mental states.



Recommended:
No

Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older