By Jason Osiason

There’s a fine line between homage and imitation, and Bubble & Squeak stumbles into the latter without much to say for itself. It follows a newlywed couple whose honeymoon takes a bizarre turn when they accidentally become fugitives for smuggling illegal cabbages. What should be a surreal, sharp satire ends up feeling like a half-hearted imitation of filmmakers with stronger creative identities.

The film borrows heavily from the deadpan absurdity of Yorgos Lanthimos and the hyper-stylized precision of Wes Anderson, but it does so without the wit, tension, or originality that makes their work compelling. Instead, every pastel-colored frame and awkwardly mannered line delivery feels like a copy of a copy—technically competent but entirely lacking in soul. The quirky premise wears thin almost immediately, and without strong character work or narrative momentum, what starts as amusing quickly becomes exhausting.

The performances do little to help. The lead couple is charming enough in theory, but their dialogue is so stilted and their reactions so muted that it’s hard to care about what happens to them. The film throws increasingly ridiculous obstacles in their way—border agents, underground vegetable smugglers, bureaucratic red tape—but none of it carries weight because the world it builds is too self-consciously offbeat to feel real. It’s weirdness for weirdness’ sake, without any emotional or thematic grounding to make that weirdness land.

Visually, the film leans into symmetrical framing, exaggerated production design, and a muted color palette, all of which feel more like a checklist than a creative choice. It wants to be playful, but it never finds a rhythm, bouncing between absurdist comedy and dry political satire without ever fully committing to either. By the time it reaches its final act, it’s clear that the film has mistaken randomness for cleverness, mistaking borrowed aesthetics for vision.

Bubble & Squeak isn’t just disappointing—it’s frustrating. In a time when originality is more valuable than ever, this film feels like a reminder of what happens when a filmmaker focuses more on looking like their influences than carving out a voice of their own. [D]