The Bubble

Here's how you can watch Judd Apatow's new comedy The Bubble about the trials and tribulations of shooting a movie during a pandemic.

In a bizarre turn of events, it turns out that real extraterrestrials have been watching the show and have interpreted it as fact, kidnapping the actors to get them to help in a space war. In the words of one of the green-screened cliff beasts, “should we be concerned about, you know, this level of vomit?” Hail, Caesar!: This 2016 Coen Brothers film takes place during the filming of a swords and sandals epic similar to Ben-Hur. Exhausted studio boss and “fixer” Eddie Mannix (who really did work for MGM in the 1920s through early 1960s), balances multiple projects and must locate his missing leading man who has been kidnapped by communist screenwriters. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: If you’ve somehow missed out on seeing this 2004 laughfest, don’t despair, it’s streaming on Paramount+. Directed by Adam McKay, and produced by Judd Apatow, Anchorman tells the story of Ron Burgundy, played by Will Farrell. Burgundy is a top news anchor in San Diego in the 1970s, but his boy’s club of a newsroom is upended when a female anchor played by Christina Applegate is hired. The mix of fame-hungry stars, a studio desperate to make a movie, and a director who is convinced that his summer popcorn flick is in fact high art that the world needs to see, could be funny even without the backdrop of pandemic-enforced isolation. Netflix released a trailer for The Bubble on March 4, 2022. Judd Apatow directs and is one of the cowriters. The trailer quickly establishes the movie’s premise as the cast and crew are informed of the required precautions for filming during a pandemic and we see them submit to the now ubiquitous nasal swabs that were still a rather novel concept in the fall of 2020. Set in 2020, the movie is centered around the production of a blockbuster franchise movie called Cliff Beasts 6 and looks at the way COVID-19 impacts the project, with hilarious consequences. It is the latest in the (fictional) blockbuster Cliff Beasts series and despite the pandemic, filming must go on. Of course, the pandemic massively impacts how the movie can be made, so to decrease the risk of Covid, producers opt to create a “bubble” with all the cast and crew in a posh European hotel with no physical contact with the outside world. Jurassic World: Dominion, the film whose production inspired The Bubble, was originally scheduled to be released in theaters in the summer of 2021 but was delayed to June 2022 due to the pandemic.

Judd Apatow brings together a star-studded cast for this pandemic comedy.

The idea is there, but the execution and the way a lot of the subject matter is handled just doesn’t cut it. When it comes to its place in Apatow’s oeuvre, however, I think The Bubble is best forgotten. But to this studio, getting the movie done seems to literally be a matter of life or death. The Gist: Somewhere in England, producer Gavin (Peter Serafinowicz) prepares his staff for the arrival of a group of actors to their “bubble”. They’re going to make the sixth movie in the Cliff Beasts action franchise, and they are dedicated to keeping their bubble secure and protecting the set from the still-raging coronavirus. While the cast and crew do their best to keep a safe set, chaos inevitably ensues. With long working hours, shut downs, and various illnesses going around, this 3-month project begins to stretch much longer, and the drama on set only gets more and more intense.

The film is best in its embrace of the random, its moments when the talented and funny cast goof off with each other, responding to one another's ...

The film is best in its embrace of the random, its moments when the talented and funny cast goof off with each other, responding to one another's eccentricities. There's a lot of stuff about the murderous security team hired to keep the actors on site, and those sections don't really work. When all of these characters are onscreen at the same time, it is legitimate chaos, and a lot of fun. Cast and crew gather together in England to shoot the sixth installment of the "Cliff Beasts" franchise, a worldwide phenomenon about a group of scientists and researchers going toe to toe with flying dinosaurs dislodged from a polar ice cap or something like that. Was it right to be putting actors and crew in this kind of danger just for a movie? There was a lot of talk at the time about all of this.

The Bubble movie review: Judd Apatow has assembled a talented pool of actors--including Vir Das--for his pandemic-set showbiz satire, but the comedy never ...

Pascal’s character in the movie-within-the-movie, a pile of rubbish called Cliff Beasts 6, has an Italian accent not unlike the one Jared Leto did in House of Gucci. The big difference is that Cliff Beasts is a fake parody, while House of Gucci was a very real Oscar contender. The rest of the ensemble, including the ostensible lead Gillan, are simply going through the motions. If only this self-awareness had rubbed off on the people behind The Bubble as well, because there are few examples of Hollywood entitlement as egregious as this. If only this self-awareness had rubbed off on the people behind The Bubble as well, because there are few examples of Hollywood entitlement as egregious as this. To emphasise the point I was trying to make earlier, it takes a certain level of obliviousness on both the filmmakers and the studio’s part to make a comedy movie about their own industry, in the middle of a pandemic, while pretending that it is pointing fingers at this very thing. I’d like to give a genius like Apatow the benefit of the doubt and assume that ‘the bubble’ is a giant metaphor for how isolated famous people are in their ivory towers, but wow, the satire doesn’t land.

The Bubble movie review: Judd Apatow's satire on making movies during a pandemic starts off strong but loses aim quickly. | Hollywood.

The Bubble certainly doesn't do much to help us process the insanity of the last two years, which is fine. Most of the inspired laughs and enjoyable gags bookend the film, with everything in between - the lion's share of its two-hour run time (and you really feel the length) - feeling lifeless and offering little to keep you engaged. Here to manage the tantrums and insecurities of the deluded is the movie’s producer (a delightfully heartless Peter Serafinowicz). “Actors are animals. “It's going to make the world forget all their problems,” says the director of the fictional film at the centre of Judd Apatow’s latest comedy, The Bubble (his first movie for Netflix). It’s an introduction that tells us that this one’s constructed solely to entertain and make us laugh. There’s starlet Carol Cobb (Karen Gillan who continues to prove you can slot her in any genre). Carol desperately needs a win after the unanimous panning of her last film Jerusalem Rising, an alien invasion movie in which she played a half Israeli half Palestinian character. The fictional movie in question is Cliff Beasts 6, the latest iteration of a tired monster-fighting franchise that a movie studio has placed all its bets on to keep it afloat.

Starring Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, Keegan-Michael Key and more, "The Bubble" follows the cast and crew of a film shooting during the pandemic.

The Bubble pulls its punches and throws any chance of incisive satire out the window. Unfortunately, that's nearly impossible when the film deals with the very serious subject of the COVID-19 pandemic with all the grace of a Cliff Beast lumbering through a forest. Do you know how hard it is to make Armisen and the rest of this cast not seem funny? No one seems to be having fun in this movie, and only Armisen's performance as the film's put-upon director managed to squeeze a laugh out of me. However, this story all but gets lost in a number of mind-numbing subplots: exes Lauren (Mann) and Dustin (Duchovny) argue about how to co-parent their adopted teenager; Sean (Key) is maybe a cult leader; Dieter (Pascal) falls for hotel staffer Anika (Bakalova); Krystal (Apatow) is a TikTok star on the set of her first movie trying to make new friends. The Bubble is not a good time, nor is it an even mildly enjoyable one.

Judd Apatow attempts to satirize Hollywood with his new pandemic era comedy, The Bubble. But when it's the same jokes we've been hearing for two years, ...

Even in his lesser films, like The King of Staten Island and This is 40, Apatow utilizes ace cinematographers to make his films feel warm and beautiful to look at. There are clever ways to make jokes about TikTok and its audience—there’s a good bit about Key’s character trying not to feel threatened by the platform’s stars—but the film mostly goes for the obvious, low-hanging fruit. Much of the film plays like loosely related sketches, leading to a hit-and-miss quality that more often narrowly misses the mark than it hits the bullseye. The Bubble is more successful when it keeps its focus solely on moviemaking and the state of the industry. Movies like Locked Down, Malcom and Marie, The Guilty, and Kimi, whether explicitly about our current situation or not, made what they could of a bad situation and told smaller scale stories to various degrees of success. To keep the content flowing during the height of the pandemic, studios pushed smaller pictures that had a limited cast and limited locations into production.

The new film from writer/director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), the new Netflix comedy The Bubble, has officially arrived on the ...

2005's The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the film that made Apatow and star Steve Carell into household names, earned an 85% rating and a "Certified Fresh" distinction. Indiewire gave the film a D+, writing: "The Bubble crystallizes the unique pain of watching a woefully dated satire about the same crisis you're still trying to outlast." The new film from writer/director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), the new Netflix comedy The Bubble, has officially arrived on the streaming service and with it come an official Rotten Tomatoes score.

Judd Apatow's The Bubble, a meta film about COVID protocols and franchises, features several cameo appearances by celebrities, including John Cena.

Grammy-winning musician Beck also cameos as himself in The Bubble, with the artist even performing a song for the cast of Cliff Beasts 6. McAvoy reveals that he was confused about why she was running, then becomes insulted when she makes a joke about referring to him as “Professor X.” The actor then defends his career by saying that he’s played many other roles than Professor X in the X-Men franchise, which is actually fitting for real-world conversations theorizing his return to the character. Directed by Judd Apatow, Netflix’s comedy The Bubble sees the cast of the fictional Cliff Beasts action franchise – a parody of the Jurassic Park franchise – unite for production of the sixth film in the series, though are trapped within the confines of the “bubble” to avoid COVID-19 exposure. Although the actress has only starred in a few roles since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Daisy Ridley makes an intriguing cameo in The Bubble. The Star Wars franchise actress appears as Kate, the virtual fitness trainer of Dieter (Pedro Pascal) who he imagines having sex with while he’s high in his room. From CGI inclusions to a private virtual concert, the celebrities who cameo in The Bubble make the strange experience of filming Cliff Beasts 6 in the “bubble” all the more bizarre. Playing on the absurdity of the film, some of The Bubble’s celebrity cameos also make little to no sense within the story.

An all-star cast including Karen Gillan, Fred Armisen, David Duchovny and Pedro Pascal cannot save Judd Apatow's Netflix comedy "The Bubble."

And the way it lands as an added kick in the teeth to the few who manage to make it that far is a perfect example of its colossally misjudged tone. One of the tired ongoing tropes is the soullessness of green screen (which also makes the film quite spectacularly ugly to watch), but “The Bubble” feels like it was itself shot against green screen’s humor equivalent, and no one noticed they forgot to add the jokes in post-production. This, however, is obviously not enough in terms of star power, so Apatow spackles the already unholy mess with pointless cameos, often via video link, from Maria Bamford, John Cena, James McAvoy, John Lithgow, a deepfake Benedict Cumberbatch and Daisy Ridley, who delivers the line, “I have no idea why I’m here.” You and me both, sister. The premise, obviously devised in the early stages of lockdown, already feels so dated as to be practically prehistoric — which is maybe appropriate, given it was sparked by reports coming from the “Jurassic World: Dominion” set, which had to pivot midway through production to the then-brave new world of COVID-restricted shooting. This entails her flying to England to quarantine in a luxury hotel for a fortnight (cue an enormously lazy montage of eating pizza and watching TV in an increasingly messy room — satire!), before reuniting with the cast and crew, all of whom resent her for bowing out of “Cliff Beasts 5.” They comprise Lauren (Leslie Mann) and her on-off husband Dustin (David Duchovny), Sean (Keegan-Michael Key), an insecure B-lister who has started up a wellness cult, and Howie (cruelly underused British comedian Guz Khan). There are also two neophyte “Cliff Beasts” cast members: Krystal (Iris Apatow, oddly enough the movie’s MVP), a TikTok star brought in to boost the Gen Z demographic appeal, and Dieter Bravo, played by Pedro Pascal, a good actor whose Hollywood movie career suggests that maybe his agent is mad at him. From passion project “Funny People” to “The King of Staten Island,” Apatow has more often dealt in life-stage observation laced with humor, than in jokiness laced with insight, and perhaps now, 17 years after breaking big with “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” the writer-director wants to distance himself from comedy altogether.

The Bubble star Karen Gillan talks about making the Netflix pandemic comedy, how much is improv, and forgetting to ask Chris Pratt for insight.

And he was like, ‘Right, do it to Iris, on the face.’ I found myself holding back a little bit and he kept being like, ‘You gotta go for it more. I don’t want to hit your daughter.’ And he was like, ‘OK, slap me on the arm.’ So I did. I remember Judd being like, ‘Slap her.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t want to. I think that was the main skill I walked away from the movie with, which is that I was able to turn that off, and now I’m improvising in all sorts of movies that I never would have before. And I remember thinking, ‘OK, there’s just no way but to just like jump in at the deep end.’ And it was quite a long run as well, that I had the most fun doing that I’ve had in a really long time. You’ve previously mentioned that Chris Pratt pieced together that “The Bubble” is loosely based on his cast’s experience on “Jurassic World” in front of you, and your agent, played by Rob Delaney is also Mark Ruffalo’s agent in the movie. He’s like ‘Go’ and I was in front of all of these amazing improvisers. I think I was the first! So for me, the biggest challenge was — because I’ve never really done that before — was kind of like, switching off the thing in your brain that judges yourself before you say something. Which is more difficult because this style of film is kind of like, there’s a lot of scenes that we filmed that we didn’t know where they were going to land in the edit, you know? “I just hope that people have a little kind of moment of levity in these strange times,” she noted. For Gillan, the hope is just that those who watch it on Netflix just go into it for a good time.

Judd Apatow's new Netflix movie The Bubble is out now. A meta comedy filmed during the pandemic about a group of actors quarantining in an English manor and ...

The clip also stars McKinnon (playing a studio exec) Zooming in to introduce Beck playing “some funky grooves” for the cast in their downtime. As an independent website, we rely on our measly advertising income to keep the lights on. “Playing funky grooves is what I do best,” Beck responds.