The Bubble review: Judd Apatow and Netflix do embarrassing celeb satire

Judd Apatow’s Netflix action-comedy The Bubble is the film no one wanted about the COVID-19 pandemic: It’s instantly dated, frustratingly oblivious, and painfully unfunny. In an ostensible attempt to lampoon a pandemic-era film set, Apatow and co-writer Pam Brady grab their flashlights and go on an epic adventure up the colons of spoiled movie stars who treat 14 days in a luxury hotel suite like their personal 9/11.

The Bubble was reportedly inspired by the production of Jurassic World: Dominion, which filmed last year in the UK under strict COVID protocols. But aside from occasional cracks from the supporting cast — as underappreciated here as their characters are in the movie —The Bubble fails to really grasp the absurdity of a studio building an elaborate multi-million-dollar infrastructure so rich people don’t have to wear masks on set. Instead, Apatow and Brady take a “These times are hard on everybody” approach, naïvely expecting people quarantining in studio apartments to sympathize with celebrities who have live-in wellness consultants and massive manicured gardens where they could absolutely go out and get some fresh air if they wanted to. In short, it’s the “Imagine” video of movies.

Laura Radford/Netflix

Guardians of the Galaxy’s Karen Gillan stars as Carol Cobb, a B-plus-list star whose last film, Jerusalem Rising, bombed thanks to vicious reviews criticizing the extremely Caucasian Cobb’s portrayal of a half-Israeli, half-Palestinian woman. (According to The Bubble, the problem was of course the critics, not the casting.) And so Cobb’s agent pressures her to return to the Jurassic Park-esque Cliff Beasts franchise, which she abandoned in part five. Reluctantly, Cobb agrees to sign on for the sixth installment.

And so she’s off to a posh countryside resort in the UK, where after 14 days of quarantine, she reunites with co-stars Lauren Van Chance (Leslie Mann), Dustin Mulray (David Duchovny), Sean Knox (Keegan-Michael Key), and Howie Frangopolous (Guz Khan). They’re joined by new cast members Dieter Bravo (The Mandalorian’s Pedro Pascal), an Oscar winner slumming it in tentpole moviemaking, and Krystal Kris (Iris Apatow), a TikTok star who isn’t sure why she’s there, either. Some of these characters have real-world parallels, particularly Van Chance and Mulray, who are clearly modeled after Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. Others represent more generic blockbuster types: the tough-talking soldier, the vaguely foreign scientist, the comic relief.

But even bits that should be funny, like Pascal’s character’s ever-evolving accent in the film-within-a-film, land with a splat. The Bubble is composed mainly of long, excruciating sequences where everyone is trying very hard and producing zero laughs, like people trying to start a fire by rubbing two wet sticks together. At times, it’s difficult to discern exactly what the joke was supposed to be: Someone is making a face, which means a punchline must have been delivered. But what was the joke? It’s like watching a comedy whose humor depends on the nuances of an unfamiliar culture, except the language being spoken here is Hollywood navel-gazing.

Photo: Laura Radford/Netflix

There’s also a culture clash between sardonic British humor and broad American comedy. This is a movie that has both Peter Serafinowicz delivering withering bon mots and Pedro Pascal doing sophomoric shit humor. Pascal’s character in The Bubble is a serial seducer and a committed psychonaut. But for filmmakers who pack this much sex and drugs into their movie, Apatow and Brady treat both with arm’s-length fridigity. The sex is of the bra-on, herky-jerky variety. And the drugs? The Bubble’s depiction of a hallucinogenic trip is about as realistic as a ‘90s D.A.R.E. video, as Pascal climbs inside the smart mirror in his hotel suite and imagines he’s transformed into Benedict Cumberbatch. All of which goes along with the way Apatow and Brady don’t seem to have much experience talking to people who’d be fine staying in a fancy hotel for six months, especially if they got a million-dollar payday at the end of that stay.

Ironically, the only bits in The Bubble that are somewhat amusing come from the Cliff Beasts 6 script, which multiple characters describe as absolutely terrible. (If the “bad” jokes are the only funny ones, what does that say about the “good” ones?) The film’s best gag comes when Kris leads a CGI dinosaur in a TikTok dance, a nod to Hollywood’s desperate attempts to keep up with a generation that doesn’t really care about Hollywood. By contrast, the digs at the film’s director, Sundance darling Darren Eigan (Fred Armisen), are curiously mean-spirited, given…