Judd Apatow is probably more responsible for how comedy movies have turned out in the past decade or two than anyone else working. For his most recent movie, he was inspired by the lockdown that went into effect for the filming of an as-yet-unreleased Jurassic Park movie, a situation where the cast and crew were kept in strict isolation while the COVID pandemic was still going strong. Apatow’s movies tend to work best when he has some up-and-comer in the lead role, but that’s not the case this time around. Instead, he’s assembled a large cast of familiar faces to show the utter farce it is to try to make a movie during a health crisis.
I suspected that if anyone could find the funny there, it would be someone like Apatow, a longtime veteran of the film industry with a strong sense of what’s funny. Is it?
Filming is about to commence on the sixth installment of the (maybe) popular action movie franchise Cliff Beasts. After taking the fifth movie off to try something else, actress Carol Cobb (Karen Gillan) needs the work and agrees to go back. She’s the closest the movie has to a main protagonist as The Bubble is still more of an ensemble piece, but executive producer Gavin (Peter Serofinowicz) has the cast booked up in a high class but secluded hotel for what should be a three month shoot starting with a two week quarantine period where everyone is confined to their hotel rooms alone. Most of Carol’s co-stars have worked with her before, and they may or may not be glad to see her back. There’s award winning actor and drug addict Dieter Bravo (Pedro Pascal), longtime face of the franchise Dustin Mulray (David Duchovny), Dustin’s on-and-off-again love interest and co-parent to an adopted teenage boy Lauren Van Chance (Leslie Mann), possible cult leader Sean Knox (Keegan-Michael Key), comic relief actor Howie Frangopolous (Guz Khan), and newcomer and TikTok superstar Krystal Kris (Iris Apatow). Directing is an indie director getting his first big Hollywood break Darren Eigan (Fred Armisen). And once quarantine is over, it’s time to get to work.
And then the shoot never seems to end. Beyond the usual sorts of problems that can possibly happen on any movie set, such as actor demands for rewrites, the various COVID restrictions are causing all manner of problems, especially as the movie is set early in the pandemic and people were still figuring out how to stay healthy. As the cast is confined to the (admittedly very nice) hotel, more and more problems keep cropping up. There are more quarantines, Zoom meetings with stunt coordinators that don’t exactly go as planned, and just the fact that everyone is cooped up in one location for what seems to be a never-ending shoot aren’t helping anyone at all while vain studio head Paula (Kate McKinnon) keeps video calling from various exotic locations because she apparently can still travel. Carol, for one, finds her life falling apart in a variety of ways, none of which is helped by the fact she is contractually obligated not to go anywhere, and seeing how the cast and crew are forced to work under conditions that just shouldn’t be, she’s doing what she can to try and get the word out to, well, somebody. But really, this is a shoot that maybe will never end until someone breaks, and it doesn’t help that the security guy hired to keep everyone put seems to be a little too into his job.
So, with a premise like that, this should work, right? There are a lot of good set-pieces possible, the cast is game and filled with a lot of talented comedic actors, and the utter ridiculousness of the pandemic’s early days as so much effort is being put into something even many of the characters realize isn’t all that important should be a good mine for laughs. And yeah, there are more than a few truly funny moments, complete with guest appearances by some really recognizable actors in small roles. Personally, I don’t think any of those one-and-done actors tops John Cena as the aforementioned stunt coordinator trying to guide everyone through an action scene over Zoom. And yeah, if anyone could make this work, Judd Apatow does seem to be a likely source for that.
But this movie really gets to be something of a slog the longer it goes on. The final resolution, when the actors have finally had enough, was about the point where I started to think the movie would have worked a lot better if it was maybe a half-hour shorter. I found it decently amusing at the start, but the longer it went, the less I cared. It doesn’t help that even the movie itself seems to question how much the audience should care about these people as they are being put through a stressful time over what is basically a frivolous piece of entertainment. While it never got into what I would call “bad,” it likewise never seemed to get much beyond mildly amusing in most of its best moments.
Grade: C
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