Last week saw the release of The Bubble on Netflix, a new comedy from Judd Apatow, detailing a group of actors filming a bad movie about dinosaurs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and forced to isolate in a hotel while they complete the shoot. Judd Apatow is famed for his massive success with comedies in the ’00s, either as director (on The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up), or as a prevalent producer (Superbad, Pineapple Express, Anchorman, among many, many others).
Bursting The Bubble
The critical consensus is that The Bubble is excruciatingly bad. Unfunny and irritating, it’s been ripped apart by pretty much every outlet; Inverse called it “the worst movie of 2022” (and it’s only April), and Robbie Collin of The Telegraph wrote in their one-star review, “The Bubble is an unbearable new low.” For a director who reared a large majority of the comedic actors who dominate Hollywood today, and is famed for his genuine, heartfelt movies littered between gross-out comedy, The Bubble is not only a vacuum for laughter but shows a director who is now completely out of touch with his audience.
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At its best, The Bubble could have been a more realized type of This Is The End. Apatow brought half of the stars in that film to prominence with his back catalog anyway, so a phone call to Rogen, Hill, etc. instead of to somewhat proven but not through-and-through comedy actors like Karen Gillan and Pedro Pascal would have made more sense.
Instead, it opts for the casting of Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife) and Iris Apatow (their daughter). In a moment when fans worldwide are marking and biting back against nepotism, a movie made during a global pandemic about polished Hollywood stars getting to make a multi-million dollar movie in a mansion comes off as privileged and narcissistic. As a movie, The Bubble arrives over a year late in to a globally horrible situation that we are all forced to live through and now recognize exhaustingly well - and one in which people continue to die daily.
Even from a self-mocking point of view The Bubble’s crosshairs are dangerously off, with a runtime over an hour too long. Even basic parody stuff like the fictional movie in question that the actors are forced to take part in, Cliff Beasts 6: Battle for Everest - Memories of a Requiem, is supposed to be based on the latest of many Jurassic Park movies, and yet every new bit of info we get about this fictional franchise suggests that it is more of a scrappy crappy horror movie (in the vein of say Tremors or Critters). In a moment between takes, Leslie Mann’s character reasons quite simply that all the previous movies in this franchise have been awful, which contradicts against the fictional film’s gargantuan budget - and the real life Jurassic Park franchise formally being headed by Spielberg and, uh… good.
The King of Comedy
It’s extraordinary to look back at how much Apatow was involved through the ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s. It was a true empire to the point that an “Apatow style comedy” has become short term now for any sleazy, hysterical, personal, and confidently crafted film. His movies would cater to both a male and female audience to boot: For every desperately horny teen in Superbad, he would go on to produce a Bridesmaids. For each dateless loser in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, we would get boozy dateaholics in Trainwreck.
Knowing no bounds, on the smaller screen where Apatow began (writing for Gary Shandling), Apatow would have a hand in crafting Lena Dunham’s spectacular six-season run of Girls, and more recently executive produced the very Apatow-styled Love, quite simply about a couple trying to make it.
Universal Pictures
Coming from the iconic cult series Freaks & Geeks, Apatow would gradually amass a troupe of friends and comedy actors that he could return to and recycle on the regular (James Franco, Jason Segel, and Rogen all starred). His movies pioneered and legitimized the stoner comedy, with tremendous success critically and financially (Pineapple Express was the first weed-based film to gross over $100 million). At their best, Apatow’s comedies were nurturing, without being saccharine. They are dirty like a cigarette, but honest as a hangover.
The High Life
Apatow’s magnum opus would come with the nearly perfect Knocked Up. An authentic and hysterical dramedy that presented the out of shape, out of work Seth Rogen as the ideal everyman unsure how to go about being an expectant parent and juggle a new relationship with what should have been solely a drunken one-night stand. In a roundtable with THR, reflecting Apatow’s own output on screen, Rogen said on Apatow’s producing style:
Following 2007s Knocked Up, Apatow’s directing ventures have felt like they were only trying to rekindle that magic. The ironically titled Funny People was overlong (a frustratingly recurring theme in Apatow’s work) and cloying, built around the supposedly novel idea of a dramatic Adam Sandler performance, but that’s something the funny comedian turned actor has done numerous times and much better. Then, This Is 40 (a spin-off of Knocked Up) put audiences to sleep and is hardly remembered today.
We for sure used some coaxing from Judd to explore [Superbad]. It really took Judd saying you need to lean more in to this stuff. To us, it was a little raw. But he was very supportive […] and we were very happy with the dynamic and it’s something that we think of today. Honestly, when we’re dealing with writers and we’re producing things that have a strong vision […] we look back and think “How did Judd treat us when we were making Superbad?” It was only a helpful process. We felt very nurtured. He pushed us very far and hard to explore things, but at the same time I remember at the end of the day he was like: “It’s your script and you can do what you want.”
If The Bubble weren’t such a gigantic misstep (there’s a whole scene dedicated to plunging Pedro Pascal’s toilet) one could argue that Apatow’s career is following a path. Like his colleague Adam McKay, now going down a political route with his movies, Apatow’s work has moved away from the sillier stuff, and aims to explore the human condition.
The King of Staten Island was praised for its honesty and candidness in handling Pete Davidson’s semi-autobiographical story; though it, too, is overlong, it shows that there’s hope. Prior to that, Apatow’s succession of comedies presented a whole lifecycle, with a span of movies from 2005-2012 released one after the other. 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up could unpack new beginnings, and birth, This is 40 middle age, and finally Funny People covered death. Musing on his characters in an interview for Rotten Tomatoes, Apatow said that all of them feel “stuck”, continuing “I don’t know why, but life falling apart is usually funny”.
Apatow Productions
Despite peaking as a director, as a producer Apatow continues to have his fingers in many a (cream) pie, as it was announced in March that he has signed a multiyear deal with Universal to create for both cinema and television and showing no signs of slowing down or a lack of faith from his higher ups.
As a society, we can only hope that The Bubble is a wild misfire that will never happen again. As fans, we’ve given Apatow a lot of leeway in what he makes, and it peaked in 2007. You’ve got to fear that if he doesn’t start tightening up his own work and trimming these run times, then the audience is going to leave this very talented filmmaker behind. But with the creative releasing a slew of movies feeling so uniquely and solipsistically personal, it’s becoming harder for fans to find his work accessible while they become decreasingly funny. If the Apatow bubble hasn’t already burst, then with a few more flops like this one, it will soon.
