The Bubble review: Judd Apatow's pandemic comedy doesn't pop
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Two-plus years in, the jury is still out on "pandemic comedy." (Yes to Bo Burnham and Borat, a soft meh on several others). We all need outlets in this upside-down world, even movie stars, but when quarantine is the mother of invention, the products of COVID-era filmmaking can feel a lot more like indulgence than entertainment: too rushed, too messy, too meta.
Judd Apatow, at least, is a man who knows a self-aware ramble. And his latest, The Bubble (on Netflix Friday), is perhaps just the logical corona-tinted extension of his brand: less a movie per se than a Whitman's Sampler of half-formed subplots and starry cameos strung loosely across a two-hour timeline. Whether that's a bar low enough for a passive Netflix viewer to clear is debatable, but it's where we find ourselves in 2022.
The Bubble begins in simpler times, post-shutdown and pre-vaccine, as the cast and crew of a long-running fantasy series called Cliff Beasts — "the 23rd biggest action franchise of all time" — gather at a sprawling English estate to shoot the sixth installment, due to no particular popular demand. At the pleas of her agent (Catastrophe's Rob Delaney), and the looming threat of obsolescence after her last movie bombed, an American actress named Carol Cobb (Gunpowder Milkshake's Karen Gillan) has agreed to return as the intrepid Dr. Lacey Nightingale. (You know she's science-y because she wears cargo pants).
Laura Radford/Netflix The cast of 'The Bubble'
Her costars include Dieter Bravo (Pedro Pascal), an Oscar-winning veteran in desperate search of sexual outlets; Sean Knox (Keegan-Michael Key), a would-be guru whose pep talks mostly go to himself in the mirror; reluctant comic relief Howie Frangopolous (Gus Kahn); and Leslie Mann and David Duchovny as bickering exes who can't quit each other, even though they seem pretty good at forgetting about their adopted teenage son back home in the States. Fred Armisen is the director, Darren, a shaggy Sundance auteur with big ideas for the Beasts — which are apparently just basic CG dinosaurs? — and Apatow and Mann's real-life daughter Iris is Krystal Kris, a bored social-media star brought in to freshen up the franchise.
After an obligatory 14-day quarantine the Beasts shoot begins, and then, much like The Bubble, just… keeps going. Weeks and then months pass in a torpor of cabin fever and green screens, and arguably things happen — a defection, a few infections, a sudden act of surprisingly squishy violence. But the script, such as it is, penned by Apatow and South Park alum Pam Brady, is so haltingly episodic it often reads like improv. (Bubble was reportedly inspired by the COVID-era production of the upcoming Jurassic World Dominion, which doesn't bode well for those velociraptors).
It's nice to see Borat Subsequent Moviefilm's Maria Bakalova on screen again, as a front-desk employee with an abiding crush on Dieter, though there's hardly enough of her. And a Zoomed-in Kate McKinnon, as a blithely mercenary studio head, keeps working the diminishing returns of a running gag about the pandemic lives of the one percent: white-sand beaches, ski chalets, a yacht trip with Mel Gibson. Apatow has a lot of names in his contacts list, and an APB to local London talent didn't go unheeded; stars like Daisy Ridley, Benedict Cumberbatch, and James McAvoy drive by, and a certain refrigerator-sized American action star drops in remotely for a late Zoom tantrum.
That's good news for celebrity drinking games, but cameos are not a plot. In its best moments, The Bubble refracts the familiar boredom of lockdown life, the indoor rollerskating and haphazard sex and TikTok dance routines, just by living in them. Like Adam McKay with Don't Look Up, though, Apatow seems stymied by his soft targets: The usual-suspect jokes — about age, ego, Hollywood — are broad where they should be specific, and smug even when they're not sharp. Both directors have made much better movies; go watch one of those instead. Grade: C-
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