The movie revolves around shy blond 13 year old Michele (Ludovico Girardello) from Trieste in Italy who gets bullied at school and struggles to get the girl he has a crush on to notice or like him. After purchasing a cheap Chinese 'superhero' outfit and after an embarrassing incident at a Halloween party, he wishes his outfit made him invisible and presto, he is!
But he's only invisible some of the time and he retains his form only when fully clothed with a scarf around his face but he must be naked to be fully invisible. He gets revenge on his bullies and indulges in any early adolescent boy's fantasy (hiding unseen in the girl's locker room) but his invisibility wanes as he's hiding under a towel and his exposure by the shocked girls means his policewoman mother (Valeria Golino) has to save him from certain suspension at school but also to wonder what is going on with her boy.
Turns out she's only his adopted mother, he's the offspring of Russian parents, part of a small group of Chernobyl affected victims who got special powers from the radiation and they give Michele up but he inherits the power of invisibility. His real father Andreij (Cristo Jivkov) finds him and tells him what really happened and gives him a special Superman type suit that he can wear under clothes that enables him to be invisible with a hand stroke so as to not catch a cold wandering around naked in the northern Italian winter.
Russian operatives who run the radiation affected special group are kidnapping Michele's school friends including Stella (Noa Zata) his crush, for experiments and he teams up with his father and uses his special power to eventually rescue his friends and grateful Stella becomes his girlfriend!
It's a lovely movie with beautiful architecture and quirky Italian cultural touches throughout (like no US movie maker would have a 13 year old boy naked on screen) and generally good acting, especially from the novice teen actors. The exact same cast was used 3 years later for a sequel called The Invisible Boy Part 2 and Girardello went on to be a prominent young Italian male model for obvious reasons.
But he's only invisible some of the time and he retains his form only when fully clothed with a scarf around his face but he must be naked to be fully invisible. He gets revenge on his bullies and indulges in any early adolescent boy's fantasy (hiding unseen in the girl's locker room) but his invisibility wanes as he's hiding under a towel and his exposure by the shocked girls means his policewoman mother (Valeria Golino) has to save him from certain suspension at school but also to wonder what is going on with her boy.
Turns out she's only his adopted mother, he's the offspring of Russian parents, part of a small group of Chernobyl affected victims who got special powers from the radiation and they give Michele up but he inherits the power of invisibility. His real father Andreij (Cristo Jivkov) finds him and tells him what really happened and gives him a special Superman type suit that he can wear under clothes that enables him to be invisible with a hand stroke so as to not catch a cold wandering around naked in the northern Italian winter.
Russian operatives who run the radiation affected special group are kidnapping Michele's school friends including Stella (Noa Zata) his crush, for experiments and he teams up with his father and uses his special power to eventually rescue his friends and grateful Stella becomes his girlfriend!
It's a lovely movie with beautiful architecture and quirky Italian cultural touches throughout (like no US movie maker would have a 13 year old boy naked on screen) and generally good acting, especially from the novice teen actors. The exact same cast was used 3 years later for a sequel called The Invisible Boy Part 2 and Girardello went on to be a prominent young Italian male model for obvious reasons.