Albert Finney's auspicious actor-turned-director film debut, Charlie Bubbles, is a study in wry humor, a clever balancing act between complete despair and chortling amusement. When the story picks up the life of writer Charlie Bubbles, his creative juices have run dry, but his bank account has not, thanks to the sale of his books to the movies. This is both his burden and his blessing; if he ever “had” to write, he doesn't now. In the vacuum, he amuses himself with his toys, among which is a Jacques Tati-like closed-circuit television over which he watches all the activities in his household. Another toy takes the form of his American secretary (Liza Minnelli), with whom he takes off, leaving wife and kid behind in an adventurous, but unsuccessful, quest for...something. Another is an air balloon, and at the film's end, it's goodbye, Charlie.
“Finney's star personality...is best at conveying awkwardness, obstinacy, grimness, obsession. So it is perhaps a foregone conclusion that he should endow the hero of his first film with some of these qualities...going in some important respects beyond what was set down (in the screenplay).... (The film) has a dogged, relentless, interior quality...nothing for show, everything to convey as vividly as possible what the director thinks the film is about.... (Finney is) working towards a dark unity of conception....” --John Russell Taylor, Sight and Sound. (JB)