The Bubble

Good mixings

Netflix’s new irreverent comedy The Bubble is a spectacular and absurd film. With an all-star cast from both sides of the pond, a perfect mixture of quick British wit and American zaniness puts this film up there with one of the silliest movies ever made.

In the midst of the Covid pandemic where the virus was considered a death sentence, testing is still being rolled out and there is no word of a vaccine, a studio perseveres with a B grade franchise Cliff Beasts. The movie being filmed in a manor house in rural England is the sixth instalment of flying deadly dinosaurs and I think that demonstrates how awful this attempted movie would be. Of course, there is the cast led by Karen Gillan with a predominantly US ensemble but with a tremendous backlog of very funny British actors some well-known others not.

The plot quickly thrusts a bunch of eccentric and highly self-conscious actors together under dramatic circumstances alongside a desperate producer, a conspicuous director and support staff.  After a mandatory 14 day isolation, the film production begins however quickly anything that could go wrong does go wrong both for the actors on set, their personal lives as well as the crew and support staff. There is a running gag of on Zoom producers who bully the production and actors into persevering with this movie despite increased pressures such as an influenza outbreak, hosting a football team within the bubble and a highly militant security team that will harm the actors if they choose to escape the bubble location. Oh by the way they are also being monitored by GPS.

The all-encompassing silliness of this movie means that The Bubble is the 21st Century’s comedic version of Hearts of Darkness on Apocalypse Now. It will continue to cause laughter throughout the film and tons of cringe. It does a great job of referencing our pandemic years including the rise of Tik Tok's influence on our world but still shines a light on the senseless world of cashed-up movie producers. I enjoyed particularly the fact that at each Zoom call the producers were in exotic faraway locations (while in "lockdown") highlighting the hypocrisy of rich people who floated the rules during Covid.

Each character has their moment in the sun in which they go crazy or overdose or reveal that their entire life is woefully fraudulent and or tragic. The (real) actors do a fantastic job of exhibiting these melodramatic, pampered and narcissistic ‘actors’.

This is a movie that you should watch willing to be unimpressed with low expectations. It will never be the comedy giant equivalent of Super Bad or This Is Spinal Tap but it will make you laugh out loud because of its irreverence as well as its goofiness.

There’s nothing particularly pretty about this film apart from its ridiculousness and there isn’t gonna be a thematic explanation or university course about this movie. It will probably only be watched once over by the general viewer but it still has a lot to offer.

Four out of five Cliff Beasts