Vir Das and Maria Bakalova in a still from The Bubble. (Photo: Netflix) There’s a scene towards the end of The Bubble—a new showbiz comedy on Netflix—in which Keegan-Michael Key’s movie star character confides in his co-star, played by Karen Gillan. He tells her that he used to think that he was better than regular people, but it took a pandemic (feel free to roll your eyes) for him to realise that he isn’t special. If only this self-awareness had rubbed off on the people behind The Bubble as well, because there are few examples of Hollywood entitlement as egregious as this. And I say this a week after one of the world’s biggest movie stars received a standing ovation at the industry’s biggest movie event, minutes after slapping one of the world’s biggest comedians on stage.
They say celebrities are out of touch with reality, or have had their realities warped to such a worrying degree that they need actual teams to help them seem more relatable. We saw this theory in effect at the Oscars. And now, we get to see it again (but only if we want to) in The Bubble. Starring a rather random bunch of performers—besides Key and Gillan we have David Duchovny, Leslie Mann, Iris Apatow and Pedro Pascal—playing fictional actors who convene ‘somewhere in England’ to make the sixth instalment of a goofy action franchise in the middle of the pandemic, The Bubble attempts to satirise show business and poke fun at celebrity culture, but with little insight or wit.
That it is directed by Judd Apatow, inarguably one of the most brilliant comedic minds of the new millennium, is so disheartening for me—I grew up watching his films, and truly consider some of them, like Superbad (which he produced) and Funny People, as classics. The Bubble is his only bad movie. To emphasise the point I was trying to make earlier, it takes a certain level of obliviousness on both the filmmakers and the studio’s part to make a comedy movie about their own industry, in the middle of a pandemic, while pretending that it is pointing fingers at this very thing.
I’d like to give a genius like Apatow the benefit of the doubt and assume that ‘the bubble’ is a giant metaphor for how isolated famous people are in their ivory towers, but wow, the satire doesn’t land. Consider how wonderfully films like Tropic Thunder and the comparatively less popular Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story skewed the world of entertainment with their distinct takes on prima donna actors and the chaotic nature of filmmaking.
The extent to which The Bubble is willing to go in this regard is to include a strange scene in which the ensemble, feeling chained to a franchise they want no part of, gets together for some drugs. Pascal’s character in the movie-within-the-movie, a pile of rubbish called Cliff Beasts 6, has an Italian accent not unlike the one Jared Leto did in House of Gucci. The big difference is that Cliff Beasts is a fake parody, while House of Gucci was a very real Oscar contender.
Pascal is probably the only one having any sort of fun here, which is ironic. The rest of the ensemble, including the ostensible lead Gillan, are simply going through the motions. Even Apatow’s wife and daughter appeared to have been coerced into signing on. Our very own Vir Das plays the manager of the hotel at which the Cliff Beasts cast and crew are quarantining. He’s called Ronjon, which Das probably knows as well as his countrymen (and women) isn’t a real Indian name. I almost expected some sort of explanation for why this brown man had decided to give himself a fake name, but none came. I’m sure Das must’ve said something about this, but I’m not sure why nobody paid attention.
Similarly, Guz Khan plays a Pakistani-British actor who is meant to be the comic relief in Cliff Beasts 6, but is given a name that clearly sounds Greek. How many Pakistani people do you know that are called Howie Frangopoulos? We also get a handful of celebrity cameos, but they’re all uniformly unmemorable. Most of them should’ve been deleted.
There’s a reason why The Bubble plays like an assembly cut. Back in the good old days, Apatow was famous for shooting interminable reels of film. Theoretically, working on the much cheaper digital format now should’ve been freeing for a champion of improvisational comedy such as himself. Perhaps it is only because he shot a tonne of footage that he decided to retain most of it in the film. But this approach affects the pacing, and makes for a disjointed viewing experience where scenes don’t flow gracefully from one to the next, but end abruptly when the gag is over.
Even if we can’t put the pandemic behind us, we can very easily forget this film, which achieves the unique feat of becoming dated in real-time, as you watch it.
The Bubble
Director – Judd Apatow
Cast – Karen Gillan, Keegan-Michael Key, Pedro Pascal, David Duchovny, Leslie Mann, Iris Apatow, Guz Khan, Peter Serafinowicz, Vir Das, Maria Bakalova, Fred Armisen
Rating – 1.5/5
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