The Bubble is a toe-curling new low in the pantheon of celebrity pandemic projects

The new Judd Apatow comedy is absolutely terribubble. It is insufferabubble. Unbearabubble. Abominabubble. Could it be the worst new film released so far in 2022? It’s certainly arguabubble. That it was created by the writer and director of Funny People is simply incomprehensibubble. Some of the jokes here are so bad they may be legally actionabubble, even prosecutabubble, and will cause toes to curl on the feet of the hitherto unembarrassabubble. There are scenes now seared upon my memory through sheer force of murderous un-funniness which I fear may prove to be unscrubbabubble.

The bubble of the title is a closed community of film stars, who have assembled at a stately home in England in the early days of the pandemic to shoot the latest instalment in a lucrative studio franchise. Its name is Cliff Beasts 6 and it is a monster movie notionally in the Jurassic World style – presumably since Jurassic World: Dominion was one of the first blockbusters to resume production in the UK during the initial 2020 restrictions.

Unfortunately, this deliberately mindless film-within-a-film looks and behaves almost nothing like a modern-day franchise picture: rather, it’s the sort of mid-budget, Reign of Fire-like fantasy that Hollywood lost all interest in around 20 years ago, which gives it a satirical value of nil. And while The Bubble’s characters may be a little more up-to-the-minute, they’re no funnier for it. Pedro Pascal plays an oddly petty send-up of Joaquin Phoenix, who shuffles around in dark glasses and a dressing gown mumbling about his Oscar, while David Duchovny is a sandpapery Brad Pitt type, there to look crinkly and rugged.

Karen Gillan, meanwhile, is the turncoat who sat out Cliff Beasts 5, only to sheepishly return for the sequel. The passion project she fled to in between – an Israeli-Palestinian conflict drama with elements of science-fiction – again bears no resemblance to anything Hollywood might actually make, so as parody also falls painfully flat.

Keegan-Michael Key, Guz Khan and Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann complete the grown-up members of the troupe, while Apatow and Mann’s younger daughter Iris Apatow plays a teenage TikTok star, recruited to bring Cliff Beasts some Gen-Z appeal. The enforced isolation and byzantine rules quickly drive everyone crazy, but the various crises that ensue have been filmed and performed with all the flair of a discount furniture warehouse ad, and are, without exception, flesh-creepingly bereft of amusement. It’s hard to recall an ensemble with less comedic spark, while the various supporting players that make up the film crew and hotel personnel look as if they were cast via some sort of raffle.

“At least we tried to make a movie – they can’t judge us for that,” says Fred Armisen, who plays Cliff Beasts 6’s out-of-his-depth director. “We made something that’s a distraction in these difficult times.” The line is positioned as a winking disclaimer, but now that the majority of Covid restrictions have been lifted, a film full of face masks, invasive swab tests and miserable 10-day quarantines doesn’t feel like much of a distraction: a nightmarish flashback, maybe. In the pantheon of celebrities’ pandemic projects, The Bubble is an unbearable new low. Come back, Gal Gadot’s Imagine video, all is forgiven.

15 cert, 126 min. On Netflix now