The Bubble – Film Review

A group of actors and actresses stuck inside a pandemic bubble at a hotel attempt to complete a sequel to an action franchise film about flying dinosaurs.

These days more than ever, we want to watch movies that will whisk us away and simply make us forget about all of our real-world problems for an hour and a half or more. Movies are the perfect form of escape, and whenever you watch a great one, you’ll find yourself thinking about nothing but the story that’s being presented in front of your very eyes.

Judd Apatow‘s The Bubble is one of those bizarre movies that kind of breaks the forth wall a little bit in that it directly mentions COVID-19, but it also presents us with high-profile celebrities such as Karen Gillan and Pedro Pascal in fictionalized roles. This movie is supposed to be a comedy about COVID and filmmaking during the pandemic filled to the brim with cameos, but it fails terribly.

This is, sadly, one of the most unfunny movies I’ve seen in a long time. There are a couple of moments where the jokes land, but most of them fall flat on their head. Apatow’s script with Pam Brady is extremely thin. It’s almost like they wrote the first ten pages and thought to themselves “Uh… crap… now what?” and then just decided to wing it the rest of the way through.

The movie isn’t nearly as bad as Movie 43, but I have to say that it reminded me of that dumpster fire a lot. A scary amount, actually. It has that same tone and feel as Movie 43, but thankfully it is ten times more tolerable than that movie. I will say, though, that it was nice to see that almost every actor involved with the project seemed to have lots of fun filming it.

Karen Gillan is always lovable in everything she’s in, and there is no exception here. She is fantastic as always. Some of the smaller roles from people like Kate McKinnon and Keegan-Michael Key are also fun to watch but they get old quite fast, and plus, the characters here are basically not even characters. They’re just quirks.

The Bubble was an admirable effort. I respect Apatow and company for trying to make a lighthearted, funny movie during these times but there are way too many problems here. And, it goes without saying that if you make a comedy and it ends up not being funny, you basically just failed mission number one.