CRITICISM / FILM OPINION – Filmmaker Judd Apatow is back on Netflix with his new feature film: “La Bulle”. A generous comedy, quirky and critical of the modern Hollywood system, carried by an impressive cast.
Judd Apatow joins the Netflix team
Judd Apatow is back with his seventh feature film: The bubble. After directing iconic comedies like 40 years old, still a virgin, funny people, or Crazy Amy, this time it joins the Netflix catalog. The opportunity for him to surf the COVID-19 pandemic and use it as the backdrop for his new comic ride. In front of the camera, the director brings together a varied cast, notably composed of Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, Leslie Mann, David Duchovny, and even his own daughter Iris Apatow. All these beautiful little world camps a troupe of actors who are gathered in a huge English hotel in the midst of a pandemic to turn mountain beasts into 6the new installment of a successful saga.
In a very short time, Hollywood cinema, and more broadly international cinema, succeeded in making the subject of COVID already obsolete. The pandemic is at the heart of many productions, most of them quite corny, like Connected Where 8 Humanity Street in France for France, and Songbird for the United States. Judd Apatow is therefore embarking on a burning subject, which we must already know how to renew.
The bubble: everyone takes it for their rank
But finally, Judd Apatow manages to tame his subject. He is using COVID as a pretext to bring all these actors together in the bubble. An ultra-guarded and protected place where the actors must shoot these mountain beasts 6. The first part of his work is generally very successful. Via a sometimes meta approach a mirror of our own reality, the filmmaker offers plenty of jokes, grotesque, absurd, cynical, and totally critical of a modern system that goes straight into the wall.
Everyone takes it for their rank. Actors, producers, spectators, social networks, the new generation, but also the management of the health crisis. Judd Apatow takes pleasure in portraying the actors as eccentric divas, pretentious and demanding. The filmmaker plays with the clichés of the genre. It depicts different stereotypes, whether it is the drugged and tortured actor, the member of a sect, the new generation controlled by the dicta of social networks, or even the one who wants to modify the scenario, etc. All the clichés are there and it’s hilarious! Pedro Pascal is in the lead in a sort of caricature of Joaquin Phoenix.
The producers are also obviously singled out. Judd Apatow criticizes the operation of the Hollywood system how the producers control everything, and how a film like mountain beasts 6 is a serious subject for them while having a total “I don’t care” approach. The goal: produce films quickly made, badly made. In this way, he does not hesitate to criticize the public itself, which continues to consume endless suites without asking too many questions.
But it’s way too long
Unfortunately, Judd Apatow gets lost en route. 2 hours of footage for a subject like this is way too long… The bubble explodes halfway through its story. Once all the valves have been made on the producers, on the actors, on the health crisis, and on the more than limited management of a film, the feature film is clearly running on empty. Once the whole cast has been able to do their number, there is finally not much more to tell. Judd Apatow stretches his feature film as if to place the spectators in the same situation as his characters, stuck on endless filming and taken hostage by a pandemic managed anyhow.
In search of new adventures, the film collapses on itself and Judd Apatow goes all over the place. Leslie Mann blows his handoff. Pedro Pascal shoots himself with all possible drugs. And TikTok dances become redundant. Without knowing, his criticism of this film industry and these actors with overflowing egos explodes in his face and finally does not say much more. The filmmaker is therefore obliged to call John Cena and James McAvoy, time for free cameos, to arouse the viewer’s attention. As if The bubble was herself a victim of the system he is trying to denounce.
The bubble by Judd Apatow, available on Netflix on April 1, 2022. Above the trailer. Find all our trailers here.
