Review: The Bubble (2022 Film)

I like Judd Apatow. I mean, he occasionally annoys me, but he occasionally annoys everyone. He’s very good at working with actors and comedians, with finding a space for people with different backgrounds and approaches to work together and emerge from the scene with something more than the sum of its parts. Although like a lot of comedians, plot isn’t his strongest suit. And all of these skills and shortcomings are evident in The Bubble, which was entertaining and enjoyable, but not that great.

The film itself is based on how Jurassic World had to go into production during the pandemic because…reasons. And so Cliff Beasts 6 sounds absurd and insane, but is it really?

Leading the film is Karen Gillan, who is great, and who deserves more. She really does. Her character skipped the last film in the franchise to make a horrible, offensive film that bombed - and got horrible reviews - so she’s back for this one. With her are Iris Apatow, Fred Armisen, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Gus Khan, Leslie Mann, Pedro Pascal, Peter Serafinowicz, and more.

Apatow is a young tiktoker acting for the first time. Duchony and Mann were married and broke up publicly and horribly and are now reconciling – while Duchovny tries to rewrite the film’s script. Pascal is doing drugs and going crazy. Key wrote a boom and started something that is totally not a cult.

Khan, it should be noted, has some of the best scenes in the film.

There are also a number of cameos from different actors ranging from John Cena as the very bad stunt coordinator working via zoom to Daisy Ridley as a peloton instructor/drug hallucination to Kate McKinnon as a studio exec, which range from funny to narratively necessary to nice try. (which is to say, like all cameos)

There was one point in the film, I forget where exactly, where I remember thinking, they have no idea how to end the film. Although the ending was pretty good, but the film did seem to flail briefly, trying to find a way to reach that end point.

I suppose part of the problem and why despite enjoying myself, I’m not overly enthusiastic about it is just that I kept thinking up more extreme and crazy scenarios. Armisen plays the director who won Sundance with a movie filmed on an iPhone and now that he’s making a franchise big budget film, will not go back to that life no matter what the cost, and that was just not as funny or given as much time as I would have guessed. The filming itself should have been crazier. I’m imagining acting styles and preferences and approaches becoming unhinged as time goes on due to the shoot being drawn out and the rigors of isolation. The pretentiousness and self importance of trying to entertain the world in a difficult time and suffering for their art should have been more at the forefront.

I guess what I’m saying is that as a behind the scenes saga of an insane film shoot, it had its moments, but it needed to be crazier. For those of us who have seen Hearts of Darkness and Burden of Dreams and Lost in La Mancha (which for those who haven’t seen them are “making of” films about Apocalypse Now, Fitzcarraldo, and Terry Gilliam’s initial failed attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote), The Bubble just doesn’t come off as insane enough.

At the same time, I laughed. There’s an especially good moment where Gillan has a moment of revelation and she says after, that was real, that wasn’t me acting. And David Duchovny deadpanned, we know, it felt real. And there are these great little moments throughout the film. It just needed more of them.