The pandemic has been used to make movies for a “Covid Cinema” with its distinct feel and tone. Generally, these movies are made by people who love working together so much that they would not mind being stuck up with each other for an extended period while the film set is locked down from the rest of the world. That’s why most of them are intimate, stage-like films with smaller casts and crews and often inventive filming techniques. The Bubble ticks almost every box on the ‘Covid Cinema’ checklist except for ‘inventive’, but Judd Apatow has never been a particularly bold or unique director. He typically lets his actors and scripts carry most of the weight without any stylistic or cinematic meddling, opting for rather minimalistic mise-en-scene approaches, with a very workmanlike attitude. Typically it’s all about writing great scripts that actors can work their magic on (Freaks and Geeks, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People) and he tends to produce some brilliant stuff in this process.
In addition to directing Funny People Apatow knows many funny people too . For twenty five years , he has written and directed humans that were funnier than anyone else on earth . So when Apatow gets a talented cast ( including South Park writer Pam Brady ) together at an opulent mansion in England for two months , some kind of alchemy should occur .
At first glance though , it seems as if this satirical look at Covid era Hollywood is really loosely based on Jurassic World: Dominion’s production ending (which finally wrapped post-production). This film starts out genuinely funny.
However, even here we see none of the deftness or intelligence that characterized Apatow’s scripts earlier. As noted above, there is no novelty in terms of direction also because usually this is just fine for his “get out of my way and start shooting” approach. Therefore, most of the cast is generally game for having fun, but with no concrete script or direction they don’t have a lot to work with.
However, they make up an impressive ensemble. The Bubble may not have as impressive credits as another unfunny, all-star Netflix comedy that was an important failure, but it’s filled with great actors nonetheless. All the aforementioned actors are engaging performers including Fred Armisen, Maria Bakalova, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key,, Leslie Mann , Kate McKinnon , Pedro Pascal , Peter Serafinowicz , Rob Delaney and Trevaldwyn and Gillan among others and some fun cameos from John Cena , Daisy Ridley , James McAvoy , John Lithgow and Benedict Cumberbatch . Nonetheless this becomes a bloated overlong mess at times that verges on being ludicrous in place of what should have been nothing more than a good time spent hanging out with these awesome people.
Actors become restless as the production of Cliff Beasts 6: The Battle For Everest (which Netflix teased to be a real movie) drags on for months. Moreover, the actors are hostages of studio heads who are all depicted as endlessly delegating, blackmailing, hideous and lunatic. However, this may involve sex, drugs and madness, even mutiny but not hilarity.
The so-called Covid ‘safety measures’ were implemented by the producers in order to keep the actors from running away and that is a dangerous allegory that could mean wrong things about Covid and conspiracy theories. This means that these protocols become more absurd by making hands explode, installing laser surveillance among others while people are frisked, threatened and punished for everything. This results into even sillier final act when actors apply skills they learned in their stunts training to escape from a movie set forever.
Hollywood egos; Covid scares; TikTok; social media in general – all these are aimed at here but Apatow misses almost all of them. There is immense potential for good Covid cinema — Host was an excellent low-budget horror made entirely on Zoom while Windfall was a tightly written Harold Pinter style home invasion thriller. Romantic comedies can still happen amidst Covid crisis.. It’s rather astounding that The Bubble is so weak; it’s equally unsurprising though if critics around cannot wait to come up with such insulting puns like ‘The Bubble Blows.’
Since its Netflix release on April 1st morning until now when its Rotten Tomatoes score has dropped to 22%, it has been interesting observing The Bubble drop slowly. High expectations may have played a role in some of the negative feedback. This approach seems perfectly suited for Apatow who values intimate character-driven comedic works based heavily upon dialogue and actors rather than big budgets or pre-pandemic filmmaking practices according to what bottle movies need most. One can only wonder what happened here.
It is possible that Apatow and the actors had so much fun making the movie that they overlooked how people would perceive it. It must have been delightful, hanging out for a couple of months at a gorgeous palace, getting to improvise and play around with great actors. Apatow probably found it so delightful that he assumed everyone would; in this case, his humor is more of a ‘I guess you had to be there’ joke.
Ironically, a documentary made about the filming process for Cliff Beasts 6 becomes a hit and more popular than the failed film itself. Like the fake documentary which was made instead of The Bubble, its production might have been more interesting than the movie meaning an actual making-of documentary would be much funnier.
The Bubble almost seems self-aware. One of the last lines in the movie is “Well at least we tried to make a movie. They can’t judge us for that. We made something that’s a distraction in these difficult times.” However, making a film is one of the hardest things to do but unfortunately if you fail at it they will judge you for that too.
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