The Bubble

Netflix movie from Judd Apatow sinks under the weight of its own farcical execution.

The moviemaking scenes feature the actors flailing about and complaining about the script in front of green screens, while two hapless Brits portray the flying beasts that will be added in post via CGI.We get an idea of how truly awful “Cliff Beasts 6” will be when Krystal Kris faces a baby beast and connects with it when they mirror each other’s dance moves to the sounds of “Started” by Iggy Azalea. This is but one of three dance numbers in “The Bubble,” as we later see the cast bopping to a virtual Beck as he covers “Ladies’ Night,” and everyone does a cocaine-fueled dance routine in the hotel to “Sea Talk” by Zola Jesus. These superfluous numbers are mildly entertaining but ultimately just pad the two-hour-plus running time, which features a number of sitcom-type subplots, e.g., Carol hooking up with a soccer star whose team is staying at the same hotel, a couple of cast members plotting their escape from the bubble and a mole who spies on the production.“The Bubble” is ultimately a mediocre movie about the making of an even worse movie. Sometimes they’ll rip your b---s off.”Fred Armisen is Darren Eigan, the artsy-pompous director who shot a Sundance favorite on his iPhone and has been brought in to class up the franchise, or some such thing.Karen Gillan, who gives the best and most empathetic performance in the film, is Carol Cobb, who ditched the “Cliff Beasts” franchise to take the lead in “Jerusalem Rising,” a bomb so bad it “managed to offend both Palestinians and Jews,” as one critic put it, but has returned for the sixth chapter and is trying to win back the trust of her fellow cast members.Leslie Mann is Lauren Van Chance and David Duchovny is Dustin Mulray, two of the primary faces of “Cliff Beasts.” This on-and-off-again couple reunites on the set, much to the horror of their recently adopted teenage son, who sees them together on a video chat and says, “Mom! I thought you were dating that guy who used to be on ‘Friends’!”Keegan-Michael Key is Sean Knox, who loves doing his own stunts (not very well) and has created a lifestyle brand called “Harmony Ignite.”Iris Apatow (daughter of Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann) is Krystal Kris, a teenage TikTok star who has been cast by the studio in a desperate bid to reach the kids out there. (When asked if she’s a “Cliff Beasts” fan, the cheerfully clueless Krystal says, “No, but I saw the trailer for the second one, it was so cool!”)Kate McKinnon is Paula, the studio head, who appears on video chat from ski chalet “in the only country that was open … thank God I got my shot.” When Gavin the producer says, “I thought [shots won’t be] available for six months,” Paula responds, “Oh they’re not, for normal people. As much as I hate to burst “The Bubble,” the Netflix movie sinks under the weight of its own overwrought and farcical and only intermittently funny execution, despite a clever premise, one of my favorite comedy writer-directors behind the camera and an all-star cast that throws itself gamely into the material — even when the material is landing with all the subtlety of a CGI dinosaur clomping through the wilderness. (Netflix even released an entertaining trailer for the movie that made it look like a real movie.) Especially when you check out this roster of comedic/dramatic actors. All right, so that’s kind of a fun setup, yes?

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The Canadian apocalyptic sci-fi thriller film about a mother, who joins an underground band of vigilantes to try to rescue her daughter from a state-run institution, will drop on Hulu on Friday. The film is among the leading nominees for the upcoming Canadian Screen Awards. Stars include Karen Gillan, David Duchovny and Keegan Michael-Key. In addition, a new British comedy thriller series, The Outlaws, will premiere on Prime Video, the complete Season 1 of the drama series, Love Me, will drop on Hulu, and a two-night event, Wrestlemania, will stream live on Peacock.

The Bubble, the latest film from Judd Apatow, is a shaggy and toothless look at celebrity egos and pandemic-era filmmaking.

Apatow has always been a fan of improvisation, but with The Bubble, that reliance on letting the actors go free hits its breaking point. But with The Bubble, Apatow is at his least interesting as a comedy writer, with pandemic jokes that already feel exhausted, and parodies of showbiz that are fairly obvious. On that note, some of The Bubble’s best moments are when Apatow does let these actors play off each other, but puts a structure in place. That, however, is not the case with The Bubble, Apatow’s latest comedy, in which he indulges his worst impulses in a film that becomes little more than a collection of bits and ideas that don’t tie together in a worthwhile way. As the COVID-19 pandemic looms over film productions, The Bubble has the stars of the 23rd biggest action franchise of all time—Cliff Beasts—reuniting for the sixth installment. Each member of The Bubble’s cast is a fairly one-note joke, each a shallow caricature of fairly broad celebrity type.

A list of all the celebrity cameos in Judd Apatow's Netflix comedy movie The Bubble, which stars Karen Gillan, David Duchovny and Keegan-Michael Key.

Apatow's deadly dull, self-pitying movie about film stars shooting a Jurassic Park-style franchise thriller stars Pedro Pascal, Karen Gillan, Keegan-Michael ...

There might well be humor to be mined from the self-absorbed foibles of the rich and famous during a deadly pandemic. But it says a lot that the only clear-eyed counterpoint to the Cliff Beasts 6 cast’s apparently life-threatening cabin fever comes from “the help.” Pascal’s character in The Bubble is a serial seducer and a committed psychonaut. 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. The sex is of the bra-on, herky-jerky variety. Iris Apatow’s character brings some perspective to the story as well. (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. 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. 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. The Bubble was reportedly inspired by the production of Jurassic World: Dominion, which filmed last year in the UK under strict COVID protocols. 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. 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.

Yes, that's Daisy Ridley kissing Pedro Pascal in The Bubble on Netflix. Other The Bubble cameos include James McAvoy, John Cena, Beck, and more.

But though it won’t get the same buzz from the Star Wars fandom, perhaps the funniest cameo is James McAvoy, who appears at the end of the movie as himself. Dieter, in a pre-flu state of fever dreaming, imagines Kate’s face coming out of the Peloton screen. For safety, the cast is put in a “bubble” at a fancy hotel, with quarantine and testing protocols in place. It doesn’t take long for the tone of the workout to change. Then she suggests the next exercise: “I’d like you to enter me for 30 thrusts. Basically, there is no shortage of The Bubble celebrity cameos.

The "bubble" is the hotel and movie set that everyone working on Cliff Beasts 6 is confined to, though the meta-comedy aspects at work here, in which Hollywood ...

Larger story elements aside, it is enjoyable to see Pascal inhabit the soul of an eccentric narcissist, Duchovny and Mann bicker about as an on-and-off couple, and Gillan serve as the goofy centerpiece, amongst other delightful performances. These characters all convince themselves that they're humanitarians because Cliff Beasts 6 is what the world needs to feel good, while The Bubble, in its own right, thinks what the world needs is the movie business taking a hyper-specific swipe at itself. Apatow is flighty and formidable here as a quasi-outsider, who's risen to fame in a newfangled showbiz way the others don't understand. As the cast of this in-movie knock on Jurassic Park -- which is not just due to the dinosaur premise but also Jurassic Park: Dominion's unprecedented 18-month production -- find themselves trapped in a seemingly endless loop of lockdowns, rewrites, and other sanity-testing hiccups, the story wears thin. The "bubble" is the hotel and movie set that everyone working on Cliff Beasts 6 is confined to, though the meta-comedy aspects at work here, in which Hollywood attempts to take the piss out of Hollywood, also constitutes an ideological bubble in its own right. It's as if the messaging is "most actors, directors, and producers are awful -- but not us!

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's impact on modern comedy is immeasurable. He began writing, directing and producing several cult TV comedy classics such as “The Ben Stiller ...

With that, Apatow became one of the most in-demand names behind the camera in Hollywood, directing eight more features and producing scores more. Yet Apatow’s directorial efforts seemed to be his most pure expressions, a little less goofy and more heartfelt than his other wackier fare. Judd Apatow’s impact on modern comedy is immeasurable.

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.

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.

For a Judd Apatow comedy movie made about making a movie during the pandemic… the comedy seems in poor taste. Our review of what's wrong with The Bubble.

There are moments of funny in the movie. What works for ‘The Bubble’ is that it delivers on the promise of its premise in that it makes a lot of uncomfortable commentary about lockdown conditions, the need for human connection, sex, drugs, and weed. Now, this is not to say that you couldn’t poke fun at the pandemic. The group is forced to live under bubble-like lockdown conditions to keep safety covid protocols and the movie is a parody documentary told much in the style of Tropic Thunder. It belittles the dangers of Covid-19. Nobody seems to die from the disease. That despite being paid millions, the actors are meant to be the victims due to the unruly demands of a Hollywood studio that seeks to profit off yet another unwarranted franchise sequel.

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.

The Bubble documents the fictitious filming of a franchise film during the pandemic and highlights all of the carnage that follows it.

Still, Apatow tries to give every actor the necessary screen time to serve their development which results in it being way too long and just unnecessary. While I’d love to sit and wax lyrical about Pascal because the man can do no wrong, even he can not save this film. This film tries to do too much at once, and you lose the forest for the trees. The overall direction is just bizarre as well. I’ve not seen Pascal perform like this before, but the man has some perfect comedic timing and delivery, and I’d love to see him do more of it. Take, for example, the brilliant performance of the wonderful and effervescent talents of Pedro Pascal. The man throws himself into this weird role of a troubled actor who’s lost his will to care about the judgment of others and simply lives life according to his wants and whims.