YMMV / The Bubble (2022)

• Friendly Fandoms: With The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, another April 2022 farce about movie stars, co-starring Pedro Pascal in a rare comedic role.
• Genius Bonus: The movie makes a few references to other movies with infamously problematic productions:
  • Dustin suggests taking a page out of Apocalypse Now's book and putting production on hold for two weeks while the script is punched up; he doesn't seem to realize how dire things would have to be for that movie to be a role model. A documentary being made about the difficult production also mirrors Apocalypse Now and its such documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.
  • During the escape from the movie, Dustin calls Darren, the director, "Cimino", referring to Michael Cimino, who was the director of possibly the most infamous movie production nightmare, Heaven's Gate.
  • There is bunch of obscure references to the production process (and the trouble involved) of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), but to even spot them, one must be familiar with Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau, a documentary tracking said production going hay-wire.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The film was inspired by the monumentally awful Troubled Production of Jurassic World Dominion and takes cheap pot-shots at it. But it was written, filmed and eventually released one month before the premiere of Dominion.
• Jerkass Woobie: The main cast are pretty egocentric and are clearly too soft to handle the real consequences of the pandemic, but the way the studio heads treat them (with at least one actress suffering a permanent injury) earns them at least a modicum of sympathy.
• Play-Along Meme: Talking about the Cliff Beasts franchise as if it were real has become common, with the YouTube video for the Cliff Beasts 6 trailer being full of comments about how excited they are for it and how they grew up with the franchise. It's generally agreed among those commenters that the movies are based off of a book series and that the third movie is the best one.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: It's Tropic Thunder, only set during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Squick:
  • Lauren's bloody stump where her left hand used to be.
  • Most of the violent scenes in Cliff Beasts 6 qualify, but the sight of the monster's genitals manages to be especially disturbing.
  • The cast try acting while they're all suffering from influenza. Cue Dustin vomiting right into Lauren's open mouth.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • A consensus among the critics and audiences seems to be that the film not only fails with its own premise, but the far more interesting plot would be about the hotel staff, Bola and Gunther having to deal with all the crazy antics related with the production. Especially since they seem to be having fun, rather than acting entitled or bossy. Instead, they are relegated to just a single scene together and it's never used for anything at all.
  • It's implied that Krystal doesn't actually like being Internet famous that much and only does it to please her mom. This doesn't come up after this scene, and most of Krystal's story just hits the same jokes about TikTok without delving into the implications of fame on a reluctant teenager. Her friendship with the less-famous Carla doesn't lend itself to these explorations either, especially once it's revealed Carla was a mole and not actually Krystal's friend.

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