Netflix 'The Bubble' Review: Judd Apatow's pandemic satire runs short on laughs
Although we are still living in a pandemic, the world is slowly inching toward normalcy once again. However, there was a time when everything seemed catastrophic. Millions of people lost their lives due to the life-threatening illness and entire countries were locked inside their houses to save themselves from the raging pandemic. The only thing that kept everyone sane was the entertainment industry. Even after losing so much money in these two years, Hollywood didn’t fail to put a smile on people’s faces by releasing their movies on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and others.
Filmmaker Judd Apatow was so inspired by the move that he decided to make a movie about it. Titled ‘The Bubble’, the comedy movie revolves around a group of actors getting back together to shoot an action movie so that they can make the world forget about all the problems caused by the pandemic. Now, there have been a lot of movies inspired by the pandemic, sadly none of them have been good. So, Apatow took a different route and decided to make a comedy movie about how some of the Covid guidelines were suffocating, but necessary. The movie is actually designed as a diversion from the annoyance of the pandemic, but it just reminds us how unfortunate we were to be locked in.
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To be honest, it feels like the movie is late to arrive. At the start of the pandemic, everyone turned to Netflix while theatres were forced to shut down their operations. If the movie would have come out at that time, it would have worked for sure and the jokes would have surely made everyone laugh, but not now.
So, the movie starts with actress Carol Cobb (Karen Gillan) reluctantly agreeing to do the upcoming ‘Cliff Beasts’ movie after skipping the previous one. When her previous movie gets panned by critics, she leaves her boyfriend for three months and travels to the UK where other actors in the movie have already reached. The star cast of ‘Cliff Beasts’ includes Dustin (David Duchovny) and Lauren (Leslie Mann), who has just filed for divorce, but they still have good chemistry. Meanwhile, Sean (Keegan-Michael Key) has just published a book that turned out to be a bestseller and people believe that it's based on a cult. On the other hand, we have an Oscar-winning actor named Dieter (Pedro Pascal), who spends most of his time flirting with the hotel worker Anika (Maria Bakalova) and Krystal Kris (Iris Apatow), a renowned TikTok star who is famous for her dance moves.
Even though the movie has some really amusing situations, they always fall flat because Covid is not a thing of the past, it’s a part of our present reality. That’s why it’s good that the movie has been released on Netflix because it gives viewers the ability to skip the parts that are not funny. But the most inappropriate part of the movie comes when Apatow tries showing how a movie is made, which is not even closer to the real production of a feature film. It tries hard to be something like ‘Tropic Thunder' but it never gets to that level.
As far as acting is concerned, Karen Gillan does a phenomenal job as Carol, while Mann and Duchovny do an incredible job as well. On the other hand, Fred Armisen and Pedro Pascal are scene stealers here. The only thing that makes me feel really sad is that they have absolutely wasted a talent like Maria Bakalova by giving her a role that’s too small.
All in all, Apatow’s latest movie is nothing that we expected it to be. The cast is amazing, but everything else is just below par and even though there are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, they get overshadowed by ridiculously frustrating moments that make us realize how privileged Hollywood stars are. Quarantines haven’t been easy for the public, but this movie seems to tell us the difference between how rich people spent their quarantine life. The scene where McKinnon’s character talks to Gavin and tells him that she got her shot even though they are not available for six more months, gives us an idea of how easy it was for the rich to get everything they wanted.
Apatow had a great concept, but it never develops into a story that’s worth investing in.
‘The Bubble’ is currently streaming exclusively on Netflix.