The latest instalment in the Jurassic World franchise, Dominion, has had an extremely rocky road to release. As one of the few films to strive forward with filming during the initial stages of the pandemic, the production faced a seemingly never-ending slew of COVID-related struggles and when comedy directing icon Judd Apatow heard about it, well, he decided to make his own movie about that movie’s making. Confused? Don’t worry, watching The Bubble you’ll never be confused as to what is going on, just to why so little of it is actually funny. Apatow’s latest should be a scathing satire of the Hollywood production’s hubris and the larger-than-life figures that populated it; in reality it is a lukewarm series of disjointed, overly long jokes that don’t come together in any cohesive way to say much at all about anything.
With production for Cliff Beasts 6 forging on ahead in spite of the ongoing COVID pandemic, former franchise star Carol Cobb (Karen Gillan) is forced to reunite with her old cast-mates after a failed side-project almost derailed her entire career. As the cast and crew hole up in a palatial English estate it appears that old grudges are forgotten as the group – including the film’s stars Lauren Van Chance (Leslie Mann), Dieter Bravo (Pedro Pascal), Sean Knox (Keegan-Michael Key), Dustin Murray (David Duchovny) and director Darren Eigen (Fred Armisen) – party together and look forward to having another hit film on their resumés. When the realities of pandemic-era filmmaking settle in however – frequent PCR tests, sudden isolations, social distancing – the group begin to turn on each other and long for escape from their high-class prison. It is up to the film’s producer Gavin (Peter Serafinowicz) and his team of COVID-protocol staff to ensure that a film gets made and his actor’s survive the process.
The Bubble feels like a drastic departure for Apatow, whose style usually leans towards a mixture of witty, reference-heavy comedy and real-life situations and stakes. Here the absurdity of the whole situation is dialled up to eleven, in a clear attempt at satirising our collective human reactions to the pandemic and the quirks that come with it. There are flashes of relatable, hilarious observations – a montage of whacky responses to invasive PCR tests – but these are few and far between amongst the otherwise long, drawn-out sequences of actors bickering over poor scripts or going to insane lengths to survive their isolations.
One such sequence involves a cast member projectile vomiting on another cast member after vehemently denying being sick. It’s a shocking, viscerally disgusting moment that merits a laugh, but Apatow beats a dead horse by having more and more actors vomit for what feels like an eternity. This over-commitment to the bit happens in each and every big scene, to the point where the film feels more like a series of sketches sewn roughly together than a fully fledged movie with a central narrative. The only through-line here belongs to COVID and besides immediately dating the film as a product of this moment in time, Apatow forgets to write characters that are anything more than hollow caricatures of the spoiled Hollywood actor.
You could argue that Apatow is attempting to poke fun at that stereotypical rich, whiny actor but doesn’t have anything to say other than unfunny, mean-spirited jabs. Without characters that we can sympathise with, an actual story-line or decent jokes, the only thing the audience is left to be is bored; a fact that isn’t helped by Apatow’s usual overstuffed runtime. Still, the entire all-star cast commendably commits to even the silliest bits, making for some laughs in the ridiculousness of seeing Pedro Pascal and David Duchovny pulling off TikTok dances. Newcomer Harry Tevaldwyn deserves mention too; excellent as the film’s quiet but sharp-witted COVID officer, it is a shame he doesn’t have a better overall package to make his debut in.
The Bubble is a total misfire for Apatow, who proves with this film that his strengths lie in the grounded comedy-dramas of Knocked Up and This is 40 rather than this absurdist look at the pandemic. While his intentions are admirable and the concept is rife with comedic potential, the end-result is a painfully bloated and unfunny series of gags that fail to provide any new perspective on the pandemic that hasn’t already been beaten to death in the past two years through twitter jokes and memes. Like the virus itself, this is one pandemic-era product that should be left in the past, sorry to burst your bubble Judd.
The Bubble stars Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, Iris Apatow, Leslie Mann, Fred Armisen, Keegan-Michael Key, Kate McKinnon, Guy Khan, Peter Serafinowicz, Maria Bakalova & David Duchovny – Streaming on Netflix now.