“At least we tried to make a movie, they can’t judge us for that,” a character says at the end of writer-director Judd Apatow’s newest comedy for Netflix. “We made something that’s a distraction in these difficult times.” I can only assume these words are a not-so-subtle effort to short circuit critiques — we’re grading on effort these days, are we? — from anyone puzzled by “The Bubble” and its halfhearted attempts to satirize Hollywood egos and moviemaking in the Age of COVID-19.
The cast and crew of a “Jurassic”-like action franchise called “Cliff Beasts” have assembled mid-pandemic — first for a luxurious two-week quarantine, then for several months of filming inside “the bubble” (no one goes in or out for the duration) — at a lavish estate-turned-hotel in the English countryside. From the word go, chaos reigns.
“The Bubble” hearkens back to similar skewerings of Hollywood, from 1999′s “Galaxy Quest” to 2008′s “Tropic Thunder,” but doesn’t bring anything new or especially satisfying to the genre, going for gently absurd rather than truly savage in its ridicule of the rich and famous. The self-involved actors are played by Karen Gillan, Keegan-Michael Key and Pedro Pascal, among others; Fred Armisen is the hapless director and also the closest thing to a sympathetic character (which is worthy of a few laughs if only because it reveals a lot about how Apatow sees himself).
No one seems particularly good at their jobs, but that’s beside the point. They’re silly and self-absorbed — mildly obnoxious more than anything — but rarely is their desperation funny. We get plenty of behind-the-scenes looks at the massive green screenery of it all, and even that seems like a missed opportunity for comedy. This is what modern moviemaking has become, and yet Apatow and co-writer Pam Brady aren’t curious about how bizarre this might be for the actors themselves. Do they go home at night and think: Really killed it today, emoting at nothing so they can add the CGI in post!
There’s also a new cast member joining the “Cliff Beasts” franchise and she isn’t an actor but a TikTok influencer followed by millions for her dance videos. Here’s the thing: Most white TikTok celebrities got famous by stealing dance moves originated by Black creatives; ignoring those dynamics — and the potential to make fun of it — is yet another missed opportunity that suggests how little Apatow and Brady are tuned into these conversations, despite the fact that they wrote a whole character who embodies this phenomenon.
Clever wordplay is in short supply, but I did like the exchange between Gillan’s character and a soccer pro at the hotel, when her pandemic-hampered sex life becomes a thing they’re discussing without naming it: “Would you like to go to my room right now and just talk for a bit?” he asks. “I’d like to talk. I feel like I haven’t talked in a very long time,” she replies. “I’m a lot of fun to talk to,” he says. “I’ve just been talking to myself lately,” she almost mutters to herself.
It’s not that the cast isn’t game exactly, although who knows. Maybe, like Apatow, they’re also too comfortably ensconced in Hollywood — the true bubble of the title — to fully embrace a more brutally funny and incisive portrayal of movie star folly and hubris. “Actors are animals, you are animal handlers,” a couple of low-level production employees are informed. “Sometimes they want to play with you, sometimes they want to rip your balls off.” That sounds like a prelude to something more, but it’s a line that just sort of hangs there, limp. The film’s crew — in real life, shouldering all the manual labor and the lowest salaries on the balance sheet, and who always have some salty opinions of their own — are rendered invisible here. That choice is pretty revealing. A bubble, indeed!
But really, how is it that a recent Hollywood Reporter expose about Tom Cruise and the problems shooting the latest “Mission Impossible” installment during COVID-19 is funnier and more interesting than this? I’m sure there are a handful of stars who have a healthy sense of their place in the world (and maybe some of them are involved with this very movie) but then Sean Penn goes and threatens to smelt his previously won Oscars if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences didn’t invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak during Sunday’s broadcast, and it’s like … do any boldface names in Hollywood not have their heads up their backsides? There’s plenty of comedy fodder in Hollywood any day of the week. Apatow just isn’t the guy to exploit it.
A month ago or so, a number of people on social media were only recently discovering that “Euphoria” star Maude Apatow is a “nepotism baby,” as the daughter of Apatow and wife Leslie Mann, and some deemed her father insufficiently famous or powerful enough for her to reap the benefits of nepotism. Talk about a comedic take! But it’s also kind of sad because it reflects just how fast you can become yesterday’s news, despite putting out hit films such as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up.” Those titles may not register for 20-somethings these days. “The Bubble” (which also stars Mann and the couple’s other nepotism baby, Iris Apatow) isn’t likely to change that.
I mean, if we’re talking about celebrities with an overinflated sense of their importance, it’s been an interesting few days in the wake of the now-infamous 94th Oscar Awards, and I’m not only referring to what occurred on stage between Chris Rock and Will Smith — The Joke followed by The Slap — but the many Hollywood types who felt the moment warranted, no demanded, their commentary. Hilariously, Apatow himself was one of them, speculating in a since-deleted tweet that Smith’s open-palmed slap — one that momentarily saw Rock lose his composure but not his balance — “could have killed him” and … look, no matter where you fall on the events of that night, Apatow’s wild hyperbole is just the kind of absurd response we really should expect from people who are probably more out of touch with reality than we give them credit for.
If only the movie were as interested in capturing that — and taking the air out of it.
———
'THE BUBBLE'
1.5 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R (for language throughout, sexual content, drug use and some violence)
Running time: 2:06
Where to watch: Premiered Friday on Netflix
———
