PLOT: At the height of the pandemic, a group of actors fly to England to shoot a schlocky sci-fi movie but wind up stuck on a shoot that becomes a nightmarish loop of quarantine, re-shoots, hooking-up and drugs galore.
REVIEW: Judd Apatow’s The Bubble is a fun enough diversion for its two-hour-plus running time on Netflix. However, the film is so episodic that it feels like it might have worked better as a limited-run series of maybe six half-hour episodes. As it is, you feel like you’re binge-watching a short season of a reasonably funny show. It’s entertaining, but it doesn’t have the rewatchability of Apatow’s best work, which is a bit of a shame as this is his first all-out comedy in many years. It’s Apatow in zany mode, which I don’t know that we’ve ever seen from him as a director, as legit relationships and heart grounded even something like The 40-Year-Old Virgin. By contrast, The Bubble is a lark, with a cartoonish cast of characters, all of whom are played to the hilt – with mixed results.
Even if it’s uneven and episodic, The Bubble is worth watching as there are more than a few legit belly laughs here. Karen Gillan arguably leads the ensemble as a reasonably successful actress who’s coming off a colossal flop that goes crawling back to the schlocky franchise that established her stardom, Cliff Beasts. She’s roped into filming Cliff Beasts 6 while quarantined in England with her former cast-mates, led by David Duchovny as the arrogant leading man “guardian of the franchise,” and Leslie Mann as his on-again/off-again co-star/wife. The gang is rounded out by Keegan-Michael Key, the team alpha trying to launch his own cult of personality/lifestyle brand, while Guz Khan is their permanently stoned sidekick/comic relief. New additions to their cast include Iris Apatow as a Tik Tok influencer whose role keeps expanding at everyone else’s expense. At the same time, Pedro Pascal plays the “serious” actor they’ve hired to play the villain.
While folks may not feel too bad for a bunch of actors quarantining in luxury, I bet quite a few of you reading this have had to quarantine at least for a few days at some point during the pandemic, so some of the jokes will no doubt hit close to home. There’s nothing more boring than being trapped in a room for fourteen days straight, and every time someone tests positive for Covid, they have to isolate here, with the shoot going on for months and months. Watching them all binge on coke while running around a quarantine hotel is funny, with Duchovny cutting up rails and snorting them off Key’s head.
Everyone brings their A-game, with Gillan the closest thing we have to a “relatable” character even if she’s shown to be widely self-absorbed, with this doing an excellent job mocking every Hollywood stereotype. Mann and Duchovny steal pretty much all of their scenes, with the latter clearly relishing the chance to cut loose in an all-out comedy. Mann is funny, too, although they make a mistake by cutting her out of the plot too early, thanks to a surprisingly brutal twist that takes the premise too far as it strains credibility too much. I believe a studio not caring about the sanity of the folks they’ve got squared away in England making a movie, but at one point, we’re supposed to believe they’re ok maiming people – which is taking the premise too far.
Pedro Pascal seems to be having fun cutting loose as the group’s “serious” actor, hooked up with an unending supply of drugs to alleviate his boredom. One of the more interesting aspects of the plot is how the actors become friendly – to an extent – with the hotel support staff as they’re all technically stuck in the “bubble” together. Maria Bakalova of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is a clerk who falls for Pascal, but her role is disappointingly minor, and she doesn’t get a lot to do.
Harry Trevaldwyn pretty much steals the film as Gunther, a hotel employee who relishes his temporary friendships with the stars and briefly morphs into Benedict Cumberbatch in the movie’s big drug-fuelled setpiece. Apatow’s assembled a game cast with everyone acing the loose vibe, although he sprinkles in too many Skyped-in, lame cameos. The list goes on and on, Kate McKinnon, John Cena, Beck, and none of them were ever on set. These lockdown cameos have become a cliche, and the movie would have been better off without them, as none of them are amusing and feel gimmicky.
In the end, Judd Apatow’s The Bubble is clearly a lark for the director. It was probably born out of lockdown-inspired boredom, but Apatow is always able to assemble a fun cast, and there is some good stuff in here even if it’s at least half-hour too long. If you’re stuck quarantining (which ironically I was when I watched the screener due to. a mild Covid case), this is a decent watch for a couple of yuks.