‘Biosphere’ Movie Review: A Daring Bubble Bromance Between Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown
Photo from IFC
From Jeremy Kibler
It’s already a joke that Biosphere will ostensibly be confused with the brain-dead 1996 slacker comedy Bio-Dome (which starred one of cinema’s finest comedic duos, Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin). This is not that, but more of the Honors Student version of that premise. To wit: Biosphere is a rather smart, more thoughtful and humane single-location two-hander, a dude hangout dramedy through the prism of a post-apocalyptic scenario.
Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown play best buds Billy and Ray, the last men on Earth. Billy was President of the United States and Ray, a brilliant biochemist, was his Chief Advisor. Now, they’re the two only human inhabitants of a sustainable biome Ray has built to keep them safe from the apocalyptic circumstances outside. It’s like a man cave, filled with books, a copy of Lethal Weapon 2, and Super Mario Bros. video games, but without much privacy. Their major protein source comes from a fishpond. But when their one and only female (“Diane”) goes belly up (“Sam” and “Woody” survive), Billy and Ray worry they aren’t going to make it. Just as all hope is lost, there’s the discovery of accelerated evolution, and well, as Billy quotes Jurassic Park, maybe life will find a way.
Director Mel Eslyn, a longtime indie film producer (and president of Duplass Brothers Productions), makes her directorial debut with this script she co-wrote with co-lead Mark Duplass. It may not completely stick the landing after so many life-changing decisions have been made, but Biosphere explores the straight intimacy of male friendship in ways that are absurd yet sensitive and truly subvert the “bromance” comedy sub-genre. Without a woman in sight or anyone else around, the film is built around two buddies. We meet Billy and Ray when they’ve already settled into their routine, jogging around the dome and arguing like siblings about Mario and Luigi. How they relate to each other keeps changing over the course of the film as a test of masculinity and gender. What’s that green light outside that keeps getting closer, you ask? Well, the macro—or the details to what has befallen mankind—doesn’t really matter, and what follows in that dome is still unexplainable and beside the point.
The bulk of the film hinges on something biologically remarkable that happens, and it won’t be divulged here, but Biosphere does play out like a Choose Your Own Adventure: Sci-Fi Survival Story Edition. It could have followed a very standard route as an environmental cautionary tale. Instead, Eslyn and Duplass’ script ends up going in a more surprising and daring direction, making the viewer ask if the filmmakers are really going to go there. They do, and it’s like the next-level follow-through to Humpday, which also co-starred Mark Duplass and was co-produced by Mel Eslyn.
For a film confined to a bubble with just two characters, the pace could have easily lagged. But Duplass and Brown play so well together that we want to see where Billy and Ray end up. They have such great, soulful chemistry, and each actor is a perfect foil, one being the affable, laid-back one and the other being the intelligent, hyper-masculine counterpoint. There is something appropriately fluid about where their personalities meet, however, and never a stench of gay panic being played for laughs. Narratively, Biosphere does cut itself a little short to fully satisfy after a well-played emotional beat, but at least it never cops out on its most ambitious (and progressive) philosophies.
Biosphere will be in theaters and on VOD platforms on July 7, 2023.
Rating: 3/5
