Bad Boy Bubby (2005)

Really Surprised!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I would've given my review a much higher score if it weren't for the rather viciously slow pacing of the film. But wow! Many of the scenes are very darkly disturbing, and hard to watch. But then, you'll flash over to a wonderfully comical scene that had made sides hurting. I really don't want to talk too much about the film, as my review will not cover what other reviewer's have already mentioned. I just wanted to be able to add my brief comments and give it a star review. Watch it if you don't get offended easily. It's now on Amazon prime for free to watch.

I say this not because my review is full of spoilers, but rather that Bad Boy Bubby is a film that's best viewed with no prior knowledge of what it's about. Much time has passed since I watched a film as strange and original as this.It begins in a hellish room with no natural light and disgusting, filthy grey walls that's inhabited by Bubby (Nicholas Hope), a simple man-child and his obnoxious incestuous mother who has brainwashed and abused her son, teaching him that the outside world is a dangerous place with poisonous air that will kill him if he dares to leave (she wears a gas mask when she leaves the apartment). To further ensure he obeys, she also puts the fear of God into him, placing on the wall a slightly broken model of Jesus on the cross.With its infamous scenes of animal abuse and wretched themes of incest and nightmarish oppression, it initially seems to the viewer that they're watching a misery-flick. However, the film is a big surprise; it takes turns that you would never, ever expect. Put simply, Bad Boy Bubby is a demented version of Forrest Gump, with pitch-black humour instead of sickly treacle.The film is driven by Nicholas Hope's performance, it is a very convincing depiction of a man completely bereft of social conditioning. Bubby speaks in broken English, the only way he can expand his vocabulary is by imitating verbatim the few abhorrent people around him. He also imitates behaviour, most notably his mother's abuse by dressing in her clothes and repeating her threats, only he directs it towards their cat, the bottom of the household hierarchy. Hope's unhinged, primitive performance is truly compelling, his absence from cinema following the film's release in 1993 is a shame. Unfortunately, his most noteworthy role over the past twenty years is probably in Scooby-Doo (2002).After over thirty years in utter isolation, Bubby manages to escape, beginning an experience so liberating, sensory, vivid and colourful that it must feel like a perpetual trip on psychedelic drugs. I feared for him as he navigated this new world, desperate to understand the variety of people (and animals) he meets. While not every plot development may be believable (parts of them approach Forrest Gump in their sentimentality), the film is edgy and abnormal enough for it not to matter. In fact, I was pleased for any good fortune that came Bubby's way, regardless of its implausibility.BBC film critic Mark Kermode is not flaky, he believes it's his duty to watch any film from beginning to end, however he walked out of a film festival screening of Bad Boy Bubby in 1993 - ' I have a principle where I definitely leave any film which features actual cruelty to children or animals… I walked out of the Australian film Bad Boy Bubby in which they mistreated a cat..' Kermode was not alone, the BBFC objected to it so much they banned it.Director Rolf De Heer wrote to The Italian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1993, detailing how the cat used in the film was given to them by the Australian Animal Welfare League, who intended on 'destroying' the animal once filming was over – 'We were handed the feral cat by the Welfare League on the strict understanding that we had to return it to them to be destroyed… feral cats are too wild to be tamed and it is considered cruel to keep them in captivity for any length of time'We filmed with this feral cat, and the approved representative of the League was on set at all times during this filming. She had complete authority, from me, to stop filming with the cat, or change the way we were filming. The cat was well fed, treated very gently, and the shots were designed so that we would only have to do one take of one angle to get the desired effect. Filming went very smoothly for these reasons.'I think De Heer gives a very reasonable account. The scenes in question are indeed disturbing, but I don't think the cats suffered to a great extent at all, the moments of cruelty last only seconds. These scenes are not just vapid shock tactics either, they are important to Bubby's character development. Such matters will always be contentious, but, ultimately, the animals benefited from the production.Bad Boy Bubby is a film as wild and unpredictable as its primitive central character, who embarks on a remarkable journey armed with only his instinct. Please, watch this instead of Forrest Gump.

this is not a movie for the weak heart , it is one of them that is pretty dark but well written in the way things fall in to place in my opinion when i was watching it it seemed that it was something that was gonna be something that was made good with the environment the characters but the movie goes beyond what that mind of the character can handle you need to see this movie if you want a dose of reality that dose not have that bull which seems commercial , to me this is a movie that is made by someone who wanted to make a movie , in the way it was meant to be made

I watched this knowing it was a good cult film, and nothing else about it, and that was one of my better decisions of recent years. Bad Boy Bubby is tense, funny, poignant, disturbing, cat hating amazingness. I was completely absorbed from the opening shot. I felt i was watching a new serial killer movie as the opening half hour played, but this film couldn't go anymore in another direction. To see Bubby chase children shouting little people at them till removed from a store, or to try to force feed pizza to a dead cat tickles my funny bone in the right places, but the death of his parents actually made my mouth open in shock, and cinema offers few shocks now unless your having a night of frontieres, martyrs and a Serbian movie. I would not know how to class this film genre wise, or who quite to show it to, as it has aspects of horror, isolation, comedy, a documentary directed style and to compare how the film opens with incest and post-apocalypse to how it ends is poles apart. If you like cult cinema, disturbing horror or kooky comedy give this a shot, it cannot disappoint :)