The Bubble
NETFLIXHere’s another COVID-related movie that makes the case that there shouldn’t be anymore pandemic films – unless directed by Steven Soderbergh – with The Bubble. Director Judd Apatow has a knack for making long comedies that usually don’t need to go over 90 minutes or so . . . and yet keep stretching out jokes until they’re not funny anymore. It’s always painful to see a movie that’s too long, but it’s even worse when the entirety of it is almost completely unfunny.
Worse of all is when an interesting premise gets squandered in such a poorly conceived, and overlong, comedy like that. The film was initially advertised through a fake trailer for the film’s fake movie, Cliff Beasts 6, and it looked enticing enough. The actors seemed to have a blast playing terrible actors acting in the worst kind of SyFy original, and it immediately recalled Ben Stiller’s incredible Tropic Thunder. A COVID-related Tropic Thunder sounds great, especially if Apatow capitalises on the insanity of shooting a film during the middle of a global pandemic; with so many safety protocols put in place, it essentially imprisons the actors from any social contact. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near Tropic Thunder level of humour.
There’s the scene with the COVID test, a montage of the diverse actors in quarantine, but not much else beyond that. The movie essentially takes the ongoing pandemic as an excuse to hold the Cliff Beasts 6’ actors, Carol Cobb (Karen Gillan), Krystal Kris (Iris Apatow), Dieter Bravo (Pedro Pascal), Lauren Van Chance (Leslie Mann), Dustin Mulray (David Duchovny), Sean Knox (Keegan Michael-Key) and Howie Frangopoulos (Guz Khan) hostage until they finish the film . . . and then do the sequel. The director (Fred Armisen, looking like Tommy Wiseau in that terrible wig) wants the movie to succeed since he went from “winning Sundance” to making a franchise film, but Cobb wants out, just like everyone else who thinks they’re not able to have creative input in a franchise film. Welcome to Hollywood!
Sure, the meta-scenes are fun enough. The CGI is atrocious – as expected with most Hollywood franchises – the dialogue is ridiculous, and the actors are genuinely having a blast spewing lines that no real movie would dare. Pedro Pascal is especially fun as his character “Gio” and his comedic timing on delivering such exaggerated drama is impeccable. Pascal always knows to have a good time, and it’s an even bigger shame when he’s wasted in the actual film as a drug addict looking for sex – that’s his entire bit. The star-studded cast isn’t at fault for the actual film’s haphazard material, they’re doing the best they can, but Apatow and co-screenwriter Pam Brady aren’t developing good enough characters – or a compelling story – for the audiences to care.
Its more than two-hour runtime is bloated by a plethora of subplots which have nothing to do with the actual film and are supposed to add “comedic value” to the movie, even if the comedy itself was pretty lowbrow. Oh, they’re adding security guards to the set to make sure no one escapes. What happens next is neither funny nor does it add any weight to the side characters, who were fairly weightless to begin with. All of them can be summed up by one specific trait, and that’s it. Apatow never deepens his characters beyond those traits, even if the movie is more than two hours long and has enough time to give the audience a fun character study on the effects of making a movie during COVID. It’s extremely meta, but it can work in the right hands of a capable filmmaker writing interesting enough material. But The Bubble is as interesting as watching paint dry. And the obvious jabs at rich studio executives who are enjoying their lavish life during the pandemic, while [also rich] actors in a “bubble” are “suffering” are as subtle as the visual jokes from Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up was.
It feels criminal to waste such talented actors in such a terrible movie that does none of them any favors whatsoever, save for Samson Kayo as Bola. He was the only one whose jokes landed well in the actual movie, and who has a great sense of comedic timing, far greater than the main actors, which says something about the cast’s commitment. Yes, David Duchovny doing a weird little dance on a TikTok video was funny, but, aside from that, anything remotely hilarious from the main cast happens in the fake movie. There are unexpected cameos that occur throughout the film, which’ll make any audience member go “ah!” with a mildly piqued interest until their appearance is as wasted as the main cast is. It’s hard to waste such great talent like that, but it seems as though Apatow has made it his mission to do so.
The Bubble marks Judd Apatow’s first digital film. Apatow has always been a big proponent of shooting on film, and even convinced Hollywood studios, with Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and J.J. Abrams to support companies like Kodak who made and distributed film stock. It’s odd to see him shoot a movie on digital cameras, and the look isn’t the same. Apatow seems inexperienced with digital photography, and Ben Smithard’s cinematography is incredibly bland, through poorly lit scenes and unengaging setpieces (save for the Cliff Beasts sequences). It’s understandable to have your Cliff Beasts scenes look as bland as possible, since they should represent the very worst of franchise filmmaking, but not the entire movie. Unfortunately, it can’t raise any form of interest from its look, to its story.
The Bubble is a failure. The Cliff Beasts scenes are an amusing distraction, but add practically nothing to a movie about the “horrors” of shooting a film during a global pandemic, when thousands still die of the virus daily. Of course, it tries to draw in as many social commentaries on the impact of COVID and the tone-deaf “we’re all in this together” messaging of actors in their mansions singing “Imagine” while millions of people are struggling, either with the after-effects that the virus has caused for suffering families or the economic and psychological toll of multiple lockdowns.
But it fails at raising awareness of either of their commentaries, because Apatow never goes beyond their surface level. It’s 126-minutes of insufferable subplots stacked together and becomes a movie because of that. But no one watching this will have any fun with it whatsoever, because the experience itself isn’t fun, and is as especially egregious to release when the Omicron variant (and its BA.2 sub-variant) is still causing thousands of deaths daily – and mass infection – around the world. Maybe it’s best to never make another movie about COVID ever again.