The Bubble: Film Review
When Judd Apatow‘s The Bubble was first announced, I thought it sounded amazing, given the premise and the A-list cast involved, so I’m gutted to say that it was nowhere near as funny as it should have been.
The meta satire, directed by Apatow from a script he co-wrote, follows the cast of the dinosaur movie franchise Cliff Beasts as they reunite to make the sixth instalment. It is one of the first films to go into production following the outbreak of the pandemic (clearly inspired by Jurassic World: Dominion) so the cast and crew have to form a Covid bubble at an English countryside hotel. The shoot is supposed to be three months but ends up being much longer due to a variety of production and Covid-related delays.
We have quite the ensemble cast: There’s Karen Gillan as Carol, who is returning for the sixth Cliff Beasts after skipping the fifth, and the veterans of the franchise – David Duchovny and Leslie Mann as on and off-screen love interests Dustin and Lauren. There’s the acting newcomer, TikTok sensation Krystal (Apatow and Mann’s daughter Iris Apatow), and the new addition to the franchise, Dieter Bravo (Pedro Pascal). The Cliff Beasts cast is rounded out by Keegan-Michael Key and Guz Khan, while The Bubble also features Kate McKinnon as the studio boss, Peter Serafinowicz as the producer, Fred Armisen as the director, and Maria Bakalova as a hotel employee.
The cast is stacked with A-listers, some known for their comedic talent, and I usually like Apatow’s work so this was very disappointing. It’s just not funny enough. There were a handful of laugh-out-loud moments which is not enough in a 126-minute movie. It’s too long and it gets bogged down having so many characters with their own storylines. It would have been much more effective with fewer people, a more focused approach and a shorter runtime.
There are some good gags and solid moments to be found here though. Being somebody who is fascinated with the filmmaking process, I loved watching them make the movie-within-the-movie. Seeing them scaling a cliff face or running away from dinosaurs while delivering truly terrible lines of dialogue (which the actors complain about) was amusing. I also enjoyed it when we cut and see them in the green screen studio, running on a treadmill, hanging on wires or looking at human stand-ins for the dinosaurs. It shows just how easy it is to place actors into another environment digitally these days.
Apatow and his co-writer Pam Brady came up with a good premise and all the ingredients for fun comedy hijinks but it’s like they didn’t know what to do with them. The characters are all quite annoying, the celebrity cameos felt weirdly shoehorned in (although I did enjoy spotting them) and the England-based story comes to a weak conclusion. However, the “two years later” epilogue is brilliant and one of my favourite parts of the film.
The Bubble is definitely one of Apatow’s weakest films. What a shame.
On Netflix from Friday 1st April