The Bubble

The Bubble, the latest film from Judd Apatow, is a shaggy and toothless look at celebrity egos and pandemic-era filmmaking.

Apatow has always been a fan of improvisation, but with The Bubble, that reliance on letting the actors go free hits its breaking point. But with The Bubble, Apatow is at his least interesting as a comedy writer, with pandemic jokes that already feel exhausted, and parodies of showbiz that are fairly obvious. On that note, some of The Bubble’s best moments are when Apatow does let these actors play off each other, but puts a structure in place. That, however, is not the case with The Bubble, Apatow’s latest comedy, in which he indulges his worst impulses in a film that becomes little more than a collection of bits and ideas that don’t tie together in a worthwhile way. As the COVID-19 pandemic looms over film productions, The Bubble has the stars of the 23rd biggest action franchise of all time—Cliff Beasts—reuniting for the sixth installment. Each member of The Bubble’s cast is a fairly one-note joke, each a shallow caricature of fairly broad celebrity type.

A list of all the celebrity cameos in Judd Apatow's Netflix comedy movie The Bubble, which stars Karen Gillan, David Duchovny and Keegan-Michael Key.

Great idea. Incredible cast. Terrible execution. That's the logline for Judd Apatow's new pandemic piss-take on Netflix, 'The Bubble'

There are a few highlights (Iris’s celebrity TikTok dances, one hilarious drug trip cameo, Pascal being a letch and Gillan’s spiral of madness) but most of the film bombs hard enough to seem slightly embarrassing. Throw in a handful of big-name surprise cameos and you have a comedy brimming with talent and great ideas that seems all the more frustrating when hardly any of it actually works. Inspired by the slightly ridiculous production of Jurassic World: Dominion – a film that forced its entire cast and crew into a “bubble” in an English country hotel so they could carry on shooting in lockdown – Apatow has assembled a fantastic cast of A-listers and friends for his take on the pandemic.

STORY: An actress reluctantly signs on to the sixth edition of a franchise movie after having quit the fifth film during the pandemic to save her career.

Apatow's deadly dull, self-pitying movie about film stars shooting a Jurassic Park-style franchise thriller stars Pedro Pascal, Karen Gillan, Keegan-Michael ...

There might well be humor to be mined from the self-absorbed foibles of the rich and famous during a deadly pandemic. But it says a lot that the only clear-eyed counterpoint to the Cliff Beasts 6 cast’s apparently life-threatening cabin fever comes from “the help.” Pascal’s character in The Bubble is a serial seducer and a committed psychonaut. Ironically, the only bits in The Bubble that are somewhat amusing come from the Cliff Beasts 6 script, which multiple characters describe as absolutely terrible. The sex is of the bra-on, herky-jerky variety. Iris Apatow’s character brings some perspective to the story as well. (According to The Bubble, the problem was of course the critics, not the casting.) And so Cobb’s agent pressures her to return to the Jurassic Park-esque Cliff Beasts franchise, which she abandoned in part five. It’s like watching a comedy whose humor depends on the nuances of an unfamiliar culture, except the language being spoken here is Hollywood navel-gazing. The Bubble is composed mainly of long, excruciating sequences where everyone is trying very hard and producing zero laughs, like people trying to start a fire by rubbing two wet sticks together. The Bubble was reportedly inspired by the production of Jurassic World: Dominion, which filmed last year in the UK under strict COVID protocols. Judd Apatow’s Netflix action-comedy The Bubble is the film no one wanted about the COVID-19 pandemic: It’s instantly dated, frustratingly oblivious, and painfully unfunny. Some of these characters have real-world parallels, particularly Van Chance and Mulray, who are clearly modeled after Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. Others represent more generic blockbuster types: the tough-talking soldier, the vaguely foreign scientist, the comic relief.

Emmy award-winning Director and Producer Judd Apatow's latest film is now out on Netflix.

The movie has an ensemble cast that features some huge names in the world of comedy, TV and film, with some cameo appearances from actors that you might not have expected to see. The cast and crew of a blockbuster action franchise attempt to shoot a sequel while quarantining at a posh hotel.” However, it’s safe to say one word most didn’t associate with it is “comedy.”

Yes, that's Daisy Ridley kissing Pedro Pascal in The Bubble on Netflix. Other The Bubble cameos include James McAvoy, John Cena, Beck, and more.

But though it won’t get the same buzz from the Star Wars fandom, perhaps the funniest cameo is James McAvoy, who appears at the end of the movie as himself. Dieter, in a pre-flu state of fever dreaming, imagines Kate’s face coming out of the Peloton screen. For safety, the cast is put in a “bubble” at a fancy hotel, with quarantine and testing protocols in place. It doesn’t take long for the tone of the workout to change. Then she suggests the next exercise: “I’d like you to enter me for 30 thrusts. Basically, there is no shortage of The Bubble celebrity cameos.

The "bubble" is the hotel and movie set that everyone working on Cliff Beasts 6 is confined to, though the meta-comedy aspects at work here, in which Hollywood ...

Larger story elements aside, it is enjoyable to see Pascal inhabit the soul of an eccentric narcissist, Duchovny and Mann bicker about as an on-and-off couple, and Gillan serve as the goofy centerpiece, amongst other delightful performances. These characters all convince themselves that they're humanitarians because Cliff Beasts 6 is what the world needs to feel good, while The Bubble, in its own right, thinks what the world needs is the movie business taking a hyper-specific swipe at itself. Apatow is flighty and formidable here as a quasi-outsider, who's risen to fame in a newfangled showbiz way the others don't understand. As the cast of this in-movie knock on Jurassic Park -- which is not just due to the dinosaur premise but also Jurassic Park: Dominion's unprecedented 18-month production -- find themselves trapped in a seemingly endless loop of lockdowns, rewrites, and other sanity-testing hiccups, the story wears thin. The "bubble" is the hotel and movie set that everyone working on Cliff Beasts 6 is confined to, though the meta-comedy aspects at work here, in which Hollywood attempts to take the piss out of Hollywood, also constitutes an ideological bubble in its own right. It's as if the messaging is "most actors, directors, and producers are awful -- but not us!

Judd Apatow brings together a star-studded cast for this pandemic comedy.

The idea is there, but the execution and the way a lot of the subject matter is handled just doesn’t cut it. When it comes to its place in Apatow’s oeuvre, however, I think The Bubble is best forgotten. But to this studio, getting the movie done seems to literally be a matter of life or death. The Gist: Somewhere in England, producer Gavin (Peter Serafinowicz) prepares his staff for the arrival of a group of actors to their “bubble”. They’re going to make the sixth movie in the Cliff Beasts action franchise, and they are dedicated to keeping their bubble secure and protecting the set from the still-raging coronavirus. While the cast and crew do their best to keep a safe set, chaos inevitably ensues. With long working hours, shut downs, and various illnesses going around, this 3-month project begins to stretch much longer, and the drama on set only gets more and more intense.

Judd Apatow's impact on modern comedy is immeasurable. He began writing, directing and producing several cult TV comedy classics such as “The Ben Stiller ...

With that, Apatow became one of the most in-demand names behind the camera in Hollywood, directing eight more features and producing scores more. Yet Apatow’s directorial efforts seemed to be his most pure expressions, a little less goofy and more heartfelt than his other wackier fare. Judd Apatow’s impact on modern comedy is immeasurable.

With his new Netflix comedy 'The Bubble,' director Judd Apatow reflects our pandemic life on screen, from uncomfortable masks to TikTok dance moves.

“The hard part was we had to train all the actors,” Judd Apatow says. TikTok blew up during the COVID era and its popularity is reflected in Krystal Kris (played by Apatow’s daughter Iris), a social-media phenomenon added to the “Cliff Beasts 6” cast who rounds up her fellow actors for an epic dance video in their hotel. The actors in the film have to endure various quarantine and lockdown periods, with most of them going a little stir crazy. So all of the face-covering takes away one of the elements that allows everyone to be in a good mood.” “The part of it that I thought we could talk about was isolation, lockdowns, trying to continue to work and be a normal person when the circumstances, everything, have so completely changed.” So my main intention was to try to create the movie I wish was out there," says Apatow, who for the movie-within-the-movie was able to work with green screens and computer-generated dinosaurs after a career mostly avoiding such things.

The film is best in its embrace of the random, its moments when the talented and funny cast goof off with each other, responding to one another's ...

The film is best in its embrace of the random, its moments when the talented and funny cast goof off with each other, responding to one another's eccentricities. There's a lot of stuff about the murderous security team hired to keep the actors on site, and those sections don't really work. When all of these characters are onscreen at the same time, it is legitimate chaos, and a lot of fun. Cast and crew gather together in England to shoot the sixth installment of the "Cliff Beasts" franchise, a worldwide phenomenon about a group of scientists and researchers going toe to toe with flying dinosaurs dislodged from a polar ice cap or something like that. Was it right to be putting actors and crew in this kind of danger just for a movie? There was a lot of talk at the time about all of this.

The Bubble movie review: Judd Apatow has assembled a talented pool of actors--including Vir Das--for his pandemic-set showbiz satire, but the comedy never ...

Pascal’s character in the movie-within-the-movie, a pile of rubbish called Cliff Beasts 6, has an Italian accent not unlike the one Jared Leto did in House of Gucci. The big difference is that Cliff Beasts is a fake parody, while House of Gucci was a very real Oscar contender. The rest of the ensemble, including the ostensible lead Gillan, are simply going through the motions. If only this self-awareness had rubbed off on the people behind The Bubble as well, because there are few examples of Hollywood entitlement as egregious as this. If only this self-awareness had rubbed off on the people behind The Bubble as well, because there are few examples of Hollywood entitlement as egregious as this. To emphasise the point I was trying to make earlier, it takes a certain level of obliviousness on both the filmmakers and the studio’s part to make a comedy movie about their own industry, in the middle of a pandemic, while pretending that it is pointing fingers at this very thing. I’d like to give a genius like Apatow the benefit of the doubt and assume that ‘the bubble’ is a giant metaphor for how isolated famous people are in their ivory towers, but wow, the satire doesn’t land.