Judd Apatow’s Covid Chaos is coming to Netflix

‘Covid Cinema’, if that’s what it’s called, has used the pandemic to create films with a distinct feel and tone. These movies are generally made by people who love working together, enough that they would not mind being stuck for an extended period of time while a movie set is locked down from the rest of the world. As such, these are often intimate, stage-like films with smaller cast and crews and often inventive film techniques.

Bubbles marks almost every box on the ‘Covid Cinema’ checklist, except for the ‘inventive’ part, but Judd Apatow has never been a specifically brave or emphatic instructor. He tends to let the actors and the script do the heavy lifting, without any stylistic or cinematic interference, and keeps his mise-en-scène quite minimalist and with a crafty approach. Usually, his scripts and talent work with actors keeps everything flowing, and he creates big, very fun things in the process (Freaks and nerds, the 40-year-old virgin, knocked up, funny people).

Judd Apatow and The Bubble of Hollywood

In addition, Apatow not only instructed Funny people; he also knows a multitude of them. For 25 years he has written for, directed and hung out with some of the funniest people on the planet. So one would think that when Apatow gathers a talented cast (and a writer for South ParkPam Brady) together in a luxurious mansion in England for two months, a kind of magic would happen.

At first glance, it almost seems that in this satirical bid for the Covid era Hollywood (very) loosely based on the production of Jurassic World: Dominion (which finally wrapped up post-production). After text informs us about it Cliff Beasts is a giant action series and the sixth part will be filmed during the pandemic (in a strangely handled low budget way), the opening scenes of the movie are fun and well done.

Related: The Bubble: Cast, Plot, and Everything Else We Know

Karen Gillan plays an actress who went away from filming Cliff Beasts 5 to play a half Israeli, half Palestinian, completely politically incorrect woman in a movie called Jerusalem revolted which has 4% on Rotten Tomatoes (Bubbles do not feel much better). Her agent convinces her to return to Cliff Beasts 6, which means she will have to leave her resident boyfriend and his children. She says goodbye to them on her iPad (“Dad said you’re leaving us to die,” the boy says) and goes to the UK.

Like a lot of Covid cinema, Bubbles is a bottle film that takes place in one place, so almost the entire film takes place in a massively distinguished palace, filmed in Hedsor House and Cliveden House in Taplow. The producer on the film instructs some Covid security officers on how to deal with actors, and it’s a funny scene that demonstrates Apatow at his best, allowing some great acting and improvisation to play while encouraging from the sidelines. Harry Trevaldwyn, a relative unknown, is absolutely phenomenal as one of the health officers, and provides some of the best moments through Bubbleswhere Gillan reunites with his teammates and begins production Cliff Beasts 6.

The Bubble: Another All-Star Netflix Disaster

Unfortunately, Bubbles lacks the usually skilled and intelligent character-based humor that Apatow’s scripts are known for. As mentioned, he also does not try anything special from the instructor chair, which tends to work fine for his ‘get out of the way and shoot’ approach. That leaves the actors, who are mostly games to have a good time, but without a solid script and instruction, they simply do not have much to work with.

However, they provide a strong cast. Bubbles may not have as impressive credits as another hilarious, all-star Netflix comedy that was a major failure, but it’s nonetheless filled with amazing actors. Fred Armisen, Maria Bakalova, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Leslie Mann, Kate McKinnon, Pedro Pascal, Peter Serafinowicz, Rob Delaney and the aforementioned Trevaldwyn and Gillan are all lovely actors, and cameos from people like John Cena, Daisy Ridley, James McAvoy, John Lithgow and Benedict Cumberbatch are a lot of fun. But what should have felt like a wonderful opportunity to just hang out with this amazing group and share some laughs with them turns into an overly long distraction bordering on the ridiculous.

As a production of Cliff Beasts 6: The Battle For Everest (which was teased as an actual movie by Netflix) drags on for months, the actors become restless. Unable to leave the hotel and threatened with massive financial fines for breaking the contract, the actors are apparently taken hostage by the study leaders (who are all presented as infinitely delegating, blackmailing, terribly insane). Sex, drugs, madness and mutiny can all follow, but cheerfulness does not.

The alleged Covid ‘security measures’ that the manufacturers have taken are, in fact, to keep the actors in check, a dangerous allegory that could send the wrong message about Covid and conspiracy theories. These security protocols are becoming more and more ridiculous as hands explode, laser surveillance is installed, people are searched, and everyone is threatened and punished. All of this leads to an even more silly finale where the actors use their stunt training to try to escape the film set once and for all.

The bubble does not burst

There are many targets here, including Hollywood, the actors’ egos, Covid panic, TikTok and social media in general, but Apatow pretty much misses them all. It’s entirely possible to make amazing Covid cinema, whether you use a low-budget horror approach solely on Zoom as in Hostor create a tight, Harold Pinter-like home invasion thriller like Windfall. Even romantic comedies can work when Covid comes to the cinema. It’s honestly incredibly surprising Bubbles is so weak, but unfortunately not surprising, that critics everywhere will have more fun coming up with insulting puns like ‘Bubbles kind ‘than they did when they saw the movie.

Related: Here’s every Judd Apatow movie, ranked

It has been interesting to see Rotten Tomatoes score for Bubbles slowly going down since its Netflix release on the morning of April 1st; it is now at 22% but is likely to fall further. Part of the negative response may have been the high expectations surrounding the film. The bottle-movie approach works perfectly for Apatow, who rewards intimate, character-driven comedies that rely on dialogue and actors more than anything a gigantic budget and pre-pandemic filmmaking could provide. What happened here is anyone’s guess.

Maybe Apatow and the actors simply had so much fun making the movie that they developed blind spots about how other people would actually see it. It must have been great to hang out for a few months in a beautiful palace, get to improvise and play with amazing actors. It was probably so wonderful that Apatow assumed that everyone would enjoy it as much as he did; in this case, his humor is more of an “I think you should be there” joke.

In the ultimate twist of irony, a documentary about the footage of Cliff Beasts 6 becomes a huge hit and more popular than the failed fake movie itself. Like the fake documentary, the production of Bubbles was probably more interesting than the film itself, so an actual making-of documentary would probably be a lot more fun.

It’s almost as if Bubbles is aware of this. One of the last lines of the film is: “Well, at least we tried to make a film. They can not judge us for that. We made something that is a distraction in these difficult times.” Making a movie is an incredibly difficult feat, but unfortunately they can and will judge you for it if it fails.

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