If you wanted to be particularly cruel about The Bubble, a star-studded and overlong comedy from Judd Apatow, who simply cannot make a film under 2 hours nowadays, and has clearly been having a lot more fun than most viewers over the past 5-10 years (although I did really enjoy The King Of Staten Island), then you could quite easily say that it feels like the best way to deliver a huge dollop of nepotism. This is underscored by the moment in which the movie turns into one extensive, elaborately-choreographed, TikTok video for a character, Krystal Kris, played by Iris "daughter of Judd" Apatow. I don't want to be particularly cruel about it, but I don't want to be particularly nice about it either.
Because The Bubble is bloody awful. It's largely unfunny, feels very smug for a lot of the runtime, and doesn't give you any characters to really care about. And the saddest thing about it is the fact that it wastes a great cast, all of whom seem game to make fun of themselves, and all of whom are then given the most careful handling, as if they are too fragile to handle some actual digs and humour.
The plot is simple. A group of actors are set up in a large hotel to film the latest instalment of an ongoing blockbuster franchise, Cliff Beasts 6. Each star has their own set of issues, but most of those issues are either underdeveloped or just not that great, comedically. Oh, and there's ongoing social distancing in place, quarantine rules, and tests for COVID.
Co-written by Apatow and Pam Brady, it's really hard to view this as anything more than a vanity project that goes for some easy options at a time when film-making has become even more challenging than usual (BECAUSE of the kinds of measures shown onscreen). This feels like a film that was hastily written around what was viewed as a winning central concept, clearly sold to the stars as something better than it ended up being. .
The cast are often trying their best, and the familiar faces are people I have enjoyed in many other movies. Karen Gillan, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Fred Armisen, Peter Serafinowicz, and Kate McKinnon are highlights for me, while Harry Trevaldwyn, who I haven't seen before, was an absolute scene-stealer. There are a couple of fun cameos from John Cena and James McAvoy, but a less fun cameo from Beck, and everyone else varies between the poor (Pedro Pascal just isn't as good with the comedy, sorry) to the perfectly . . . okay. Leslie Mann and Iris Apatow aren't necessarily bad in their roles, but their casting feels like an excuse to make this a fun time for the family, rather than the best time possible for the viewing audience.
There's great stuff to be mined from this kind of scenario, from the actors feeling privileged enough that they don't think they should need to adhere to social distancing rules to the lengths a studio will go to in order to get more content out there after such a lean spell, but this doesn't succeed. Part of the problem, perhaps, is making the film being made such an obviously stupid one (seriously, it's maybe less substantial than Monster Trucks), but I think the biggest problem is Apatow, someone who continues to move further and further away from any place where he can be self-critical and disciplined.
It gets one point for every time I laughed.
3/10
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