It pains me to state that Judd Apatow’s “The Bubble” is easily the worst film of his career, but it is. In fact, it’s unwatchable, a film filled with annoying characters and a pandemic-era premise that just doesn’t really feel fresh or original.
“The Bubble” makes Apatow’s last film, “The King of Staten Island,” look like a masterpiece. That one had a good Pete Davidson performance at the center of its narrative. Most Apatow’s are driven by great central performances, this one doesn’t have one.
It’s Apatow’s silliest movie. A movie within a movie that recalls the hijinks of “Tropic Thunder.” This is a peculiar one for Apatow, not grounded in pertienence and straying far away from the realist comic gold of his best films, “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old-Virgin.”
It plays like a satire of Hollywood idiocy, but doesn’t seem to realize that it is the very same thing it mocks. It also clocks in at a plodding 126 minutes. Why, Judd? The critics seem to be in agreement with me. “The Bubble” has a 36 on Metacritic and is 23% rotten on RT.
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.