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It takes a certain kind of touch, a populist brilliance, to know that “Milk was a bad choice” could help launch a comedy empire. Adam McKay had that when he scoured through the many improvised lines of “Anchorman,” and co-created what will probably be known as the last movement of American blockbuster comedy. And he continued that touch with the unmitigated triumph “ The Big Short ,” venturing to educate moviegoers about the housing crisis using movie stars and furious monologues. But McKay is mightily thwarted by the larger scope of “Don’t Look Up,” a hybrid of his comedic and dramatic instincts that only dreams of being insightful about social media, technology, global warming, celebrity, and in general, human existence. A disastrous movie, “Don’t Look Up” shows McKay as the most out of touch he’s ever been with what is clever, or how to get his audience to care.  

If “Don’t Look Up” deserves any award, it’s for the work of its casting director, Francine Maisler . This Netflix movie is packed with so many big, expensive names, and it often puts them all in the same room. One scene has Leonardo DiCaprio , Ariana Grande , Cate Blanchett , Tyler Perry , and Jennifer Lawrence sitting next to each other, with Scott Mescudi ( Kid Cudi ) on a video feed for good measure. The amount of star power on-screen is set up for a once-in-a-lifetime comedy free-for-all, but “Don’t Look Up” uses this to make one of many anti-provocative jokes about how celebrity messiness compels us more than the death of our planet. Get used to that rise of anticipation and crash of execution if you want to be unsurprised by "Don't Look Up."

The movie's first bungled joke concerns its biggest name, Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a low-level astronomer from Michigan. McKay takes the nuclear energy within golden boy DiCaprio, the kind that gets him Oscar nominations year after year, and makes him swallow it so that he turns into a mildly amusing Will Ferrell character. The ulcers for DiCaprio’s Dr. Mindy are especially bad after his assistant Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) casually makes a horrific discovery: a comet is coming for planet Earth in six months and 14 days. They quickly want to let the world know, and realize in the coming days that people don’t care about bad news about the future.  

Their initial audience for their news is the President of the United States, played by Meryl Streep . When she does finally take a meeting with them, she’s more concerned about her polling numbers, how things will look; an apocalypse won’t help the upcoming primaries. McKay begins to needle the viewer with the joke that no one cares about the end of the world as much the latest distracting scandal. There’s no respite offered from Jonah Hill , who plays a mildly funny character—her chief of staff, and sociopathic son—but is reduced to easy bro jokes. Like many characters, you can see the reflection of what it means, but the joke often ends at recognition. And because the movie’s editing is complicit in the short attention spans that McKay nonetheless rages against, it tends to intercut different framed pictures of Streep’s President Orlean with various celebrities, or hop from one scene to another while characters are talking mid-sentence.  

Mindy and Dibiasky then take their message to the media, but the platform is a banter-heavy morning show (hosted by vacuous characters played by Perry and Blanchett) where the producers try to smooth their story into a cutesy scientific discovery in between the aforementioned Grande incident. Only one of the astronomers makes it out of the studio appearance without turning into a national meme—and no one takes their screed seriously—but it sets them on contrasting paths of popularity, becoming the media distraction themselves. Credit to moments when the chaos of "Don't Look Up" feels inspired, watching Leonardo DiCaprio use his Oscar-approved volume to scream “We’re all going to die” on a “Sesame Street”-like show is funny.  

But of the many exciting names who are then wasted on this movie’s limited sense of humor, Blanchett is at the top of the list. She’s one of the best in the game, and McKay makes her plastic and cheap, and one of many characters who are not stretched out nearly enough in this high-art spoof. The same more or less happens to a forgotten Lawrence, or Streep, or Perry, or Melanie Lynskey , or Timoth é e Chalamet, as yet another grungy, lackadaisical, superficial pre-adult. And then there’s Rob Morgan , who plays a nothing sidekick to Lawrence and DiCaprio despite being just as good as them.  

The plotting of “Don’t Look Up” isn't just anti-urgent, it also makes one constantly aware of what this movie is not doing. Aside from how it continuously makes you scrape the walls of its hollow comic sequences for a laugh, it does not say anything new about how misinformation became a political cause, or about how scandals are the true opiate for the masses, whether it involves a pop star or the president. It certainly has little to offer about the role technology plays in this, with Mark Rylance playing a half- Elon Musk , quarter-Joe Biden tech guru who calls the shots even more than POTUS. “Don’t Look Up” thinks it’s pushing many savvy political buttons, when it’s only pointing out the obvious and the easy, over and over.  

McKay uses frustrating shorthand to create scope out of his scenario that concerns the whole world, but only when it cares to acknowledge it—the constant stock footage is so broad that it turns human existence into a generic nothingness (someone, lock him out of the stock!), and there’s little wit from its social media montages, which introduce a new hashtag after each public development, including the denier phrase that gives the movie its title. It’s an entertainer’s tired shtick dressed up as authorship—McKay has also made yet another talented cinematographer (in this case, Oscar winner Linus Sandgren ), bobble the camera for the sake of feigning energy (one shot in particular looks like the camera is dropped right before it cuts away).  

It’s almost irrelevant that this is McKay’s worst film yet, because there’s something far more maddening about the promise of, the potential, and the importance that “Don’t Look Up” foists upon itself. This is, of course, about global warming, and  how we’re not doing enough about it — a funny premise for a star-studded comedy with disturbing stake s. But McKay has filled this parable with hot air, wanting us to marvel at and then choke on its mediocre jokes. 

Now playing in select theaters and available on Netflix on December 24.

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Don't Look Up (2021)

138 minutes

Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky

Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy

Meryl Streep as President Janie Orlean

Cate Blanchett as Brie Evantee

Rob Morgan as Dr. Clayton 'Teddy' Oglethorpe

Jonah Hill as Jason Orlean

Mark Rylance

Tyler Perry as Jack Bremmer

Timothée Chalamet as Quentin

Ron Perlman as Colonel Ben Drask

Ariana Grande as Riley Bina

Kid Cudi as DJ Chello

Melanie Lynskey as June

Himesh Patel as Phillip

Writer (story by)

• David Sirota

Cinematographer

• Linus Sandgren
• Hank Corwin
• Nicholas Britell
• Francine Maisler

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‘Don’t Look Up’ Review: Tick, Tick, Kablooey

Adam McKay wants you to know that it’s the end of the world and you should absolutely, unequivocally not feel fine. (But do laugh.)

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By Manohla Dargis

Movies love to menace Earth. It’s human nature. In some of the most plausible doomsday flicks — “Meteor,” “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” — a big space rock threatens annihilation. Usually, if not always happily, someone finally comes to the rescue, though that isn’t the case in the 1951 film “ When Worlds Collide .” Before it makes good on its title, this shocker rockets survivalists on an ark to colonize another planet, which is more or less what Elon Musk has talked about with Space X.

The director Adam McKay is not in the mood for nihilistic flights of fancy. Our planet is too dear and its future too terrifying, as the accelerated pace of species extinction and global deforestation underscore. But humanity isn’t interested in saving Earth, never mind itself, as the recent Glasgow climate summit reminded us. We’re too numb, dumb, powerless and indifferent, too busy fighting trivial battles. So McKay has made “Don’t Look Up,” a very angry, deeply anguished comedy freak out about how we are blowing it, hurtling toward oblivion. He’s sweetened the bummer setup with plenty of yuks — good, bad, indifferent — but if you weep, it may not be from laughing.

Maybe bring hankies, though don’t look for speeches about climate change and global warming. Rather than directly confronting the existential horror of our environmental catastrophe, McKay has taken an allegorical approach in “Don’t Look Up” with a world-destroying comet. Oh sure, on its website, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (yes, it’s real) isn’t worried about near-Earth objects, as they’re called: “No known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years.” Whew. But no matter. The planet is on fire, and so is McKay, who’s embraced his inner Roland Emmerich (“2012”) with a fury by lobbing a great big joke at us.

That joke is definitely on us or soon will be in “Don’t Look Up,” which follows a studiously curated ragtag collection of scientists, politicians, military types, journalists and miscellaneous others who face — or don’t — the threat of a rapidly approaching comet. “I heard there’s an asteroid or a comet or something that you don’t like the looks of,” a visibly bored president of the United States (Meryl Streep) says to some anxious scientists who have been granted an imperial audience. The scientists really don’t like what they’ve seen but the president has other things on her mind, including upcoming elections and the friendly perv she’s trying to get placed on the Supreme Court.

Packed with big names, many locations and ambitiously staged set pieces (and a lot of giddily terrible hairdos), the movie is a busy, boisterous mixed bag, and whether you laugh or not you may still grit your teeth. The story opens in an observatory where Jennifer Lawrence, who plays a grad student, Kate Dibiasky, first spots the comet. Kate’s giddiness over her discovery soon turns to fear when her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (a terrific Leonardo DiCaprio), crunches some numbers and realizes the worst. Together, they pass along the bad news. Enter NASA (Rob Morgan), the military (Paul Guilfoyle) and the White House, which is where the movie’s breeziness takes a turn for the ominous.

Also for the frantic, strident and obvious. McKay’s touch here is considerably blunter and less productive than it has been in a while. In his two previous movies — “ The Big Short ” and “ Vice ” — he blended comedic and dramatic modes to fascinating effect. He experimented with tone and pitch, and played up and down different scales, from the deadly serious to the outrageously silly. It didn’t always work. It proved easier to get into McKay’s groove when you laughed at, say, Margot Robbie explaining subprime mortgages while she’s taking a bubble bath in “The Big Short” than when you watched Christian Bale’s Dick Cheney discussing another American war in “Vice.”

The stakes are higher still in “Don’t Look Up,” which grows progressively more frenetic and wobbly as the inevitability of the catastrophe is finally grasped by even the most ridiculous of the movie’s buffoon-rich cast of characters. One problem is that some of McKay’s biggest targets here — specifically in politics and infotainment — have already reached maximum self-parody or tragedy (or both). What is left to satirically skewer when facts are derided as opinion, flat Earthers attend annual conferences and conspiracy theory movements like QAnon have become powerful political forces?

Even so, McKay keeps swinging hard and fast, and from the start, establishes a sense of visceral urgency with loose, agitated camerawork and brisk editing that fits the ticking-bomb story. He slings zingers and stages bits of comic business, making fine use of funny faces, jumping eyebrows, slow burns and double takes. Part ethnographer, part sociologist, he is especially good at mining the funny-ha-ha, funny-weird spaces in between people. But he’s not always in control of his material, including some cheap shots that slide into witless sexism. Presidential vanity is always a fair target, but too many of the digs directed at Streep’s character play into gender stereotypes.

Streep is a great deal of fun to watch when she’s not unintentionally making you cringe, and Lawrence gives the movie a steady emotional pulse even at its most frantic. McKay’s work with DiCaprio is particularly memorable, partly because Dr. Mindy’s trajectory — from honest, concerned scientist to glib, showboating celebrity — strengthens the movie’s heartbreaking, unspeakable truth: Human narcissism and all that it has wrought, including the destruction of nature, will finally be our downfall. In the end, McKay isn’t doing much more in this movie than yelling at us, but then, we do deserve it.

Don’t Look Up Rated R for violence, language and the apocalypse. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Don’t Look Up is an absurdist mirror of our reality — before it just becomes a regular mirror

Netflix’s latest star-laden film is an emotional ride through the absurd.

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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For a goofy satire about a comet destroying the planet, Don’t Look Up sure takes you on an emotional journey. The film — helmed by writer and director Adam McKay, best-known for movies like Step Brothers and Anchorman — starts out hilarious, with big-name stars trading one-liners amid an impending apocalypse. But over its lengthy runtime, it slowly morphs into something else. Laughs give way to anger, frustration, and ultimately a kind of desperate hope. It’s a trajectory that serves as an eerie mirror to the last two years of pandemic life — just don’t go in expecting lighthearted fun.

Don’t Look Up doesn’t waste any time getting going. It starts out with a pair of Michigan State astronomers, Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate (Jennifer Lawrence), discovering a massive comet in the sky that’s somewhere between five and 10 kilometers wide. But the excitement of discovery quickly turns to dread, as the pair realize that it’s on a collision course with Earth, and it will cause an extinction-level event in around six months. They rush to the White House to inform the president, played by Meryl Streep, only to be left waiting for hours as she deals with a much more pressing dilemma involving nude models. What follows is a delightfully goofy exchange, where the president and her chief of staff (Jonah Hill) who is also her self-absorbed son, debate the political ramifications of revealing that everyone is about to die ahead of midterms. “The timing, it’s just atrocious,” the president tells them, while noting that she’ll have her own people — from an Ivy League school, of course — assess things.

It would all be absurd if it didn’t feel so close to reality. What should be the only thing that matters to everyone on the planet — finding a way to avoid the destruction of all life — gets drowned out by election season and, later, a celebrity breakup. Early on, this contrast is played up for laughs; the astronomers struggle to get their message across because no one wants to hear bad news. They go on a talk show where they’re told to keep things light. When Kate (Lawrence) explodes in frustration and tells the hosts that everyone is going to die, she becomes a meme.

The absurdism that mirrors our own reality a little too neatly is helped along by a tremendous cast. This movie is stacked with talent. I could watch Streep and Hill banter all day long, and Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi are perfectly cast as the on again, off again pop star power couple. Meanwhile, Lawrence does an amazing job of channeling the anger I know I’d be feeling in her position. Other actors do great work with smaller-but-vital roles; Timothée Chalamet as a painfully earnest Twitch streamer / skate punk, Ron Perlman as a definitely racist war hero. Everyone brings it.

But slowly that good humor gives way and Don’t Look Up gets uncomfortably real. Once the message gets out there, it becomes polarizing. Randall (DiCaprio) turns into a social media star, a hunky scientist who is the face of the government’s constantly shifting plan to try to deflect the comet, while Kate becomes a pariah because of her realist attitude. A chunk of space rock that will eviscerate life on Earth ends up creating political divides. Some are terrified, others don’t believe it’s even real. While working class voters turn hopeful about the jobs the comet will provide, an evil tech mogul salivates at all of the rare Earth metals it contains. At one point Randall is forced to ask: what’s the point of trillions of dollars if we’re all dead? He’s laughed out of the room.

It’s infuriating watching the population argue instead of work together to ensure their literal survival. Sadly, little of the movie seems far-fetched given… well, the past two years on the real planet Earth. We’ve all seen the divides that come from a true existential crisis during the pandemic, and Don’t Look Up is an uncanny reflection of that reality. You could call aspects of it goofy or unrealistic, but then again many of us spent the early days of the pandemic learning to bake bread while watching Tiger King . Don’t Look Up exaggerates a bit, but it’s not too far off the mark.

It stretches on perhaps a little too long — the movie clocks in at nearly two and a half hours — but the journey Don’t Look Up takes viewers on is mesmerizing. I went from laughing at the absurdity of a military general scamming some astronomers out of $20 to being genuinely mad at everyone not only ignoring the obvious but, in some cases, rooting for the damn comet. Toward the end, when the collision becomes impossible to ignore, I just felt bad for everyone involved. Don’t Look Up has a largely dismal outlook on humanity, but it ends on a surprisingly hopeful note. (You should definitely stick around for the credits where it wraps back around to being hilarious.)

I’m not sure if the film made me realize anything new about myself or life during the pandemic, but it was certainly cathartic to see it all play out in such dramatic fashion.

Don’t Look Up is coming to select theaters on December 10th, before hitting Netflix on December 24th.

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‘Don’t Look Up’ Review: The Sky Is Falling in Adam McKay’s Crank Comet Comedy

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play scientists with a Cassandra problem, futilely trying to warn earthlings that their days are numbered.

By Peter Debruge

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Humans are stupid and can’t be expected to agree on anything, even if their existence depends on it. That’s the “hilarious” insight Adam McKay wants to impart with “Don’t Look Up,” a smug, easy-target political satire in which two earnest astronomers ( Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence ) have one hell of a time trying to convince an attention-deficit president ( Meryl Streep , clearly having more fun than we are) or bobblehead media (repped by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) that there’s a comet hurtling toward Earth.

“Keep it light, fun.” That’s the advice a cable talk-show producer gives “the sky is falling” scientists Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio, looking dweeby) and Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence, sporting a nose ring and hair the color of red velvet cake) when the pair appear on “The Daily Rip” to share the news with the masses. Except the sky is falling, and these two can’t get anyone to take them seriously. They’ve already been to the White House, where Streep’s Trump-like President Orlean (also the name of her “Adaptation” character) and her bratty chief of staff/son (Jonah Hill in his single most obnoxious role) were too busy damage-controlling a ratings disaster to deal with a potential extinction event.

Rather than “sit tight and assess,” as the administration recommends, the scientists — along with rational-minded Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) from the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (evidently a real place) — decide to leak the news on an insipid but popular “Good Morning America”-style talk show. Dr. Mindy does well on TV, adapting to the hosts’ brainless banter, but Dibiasky can’t deal, snapping, “Well, maybe the discussion of the planet isn’t supposed to be fun! Maybe it’s supposed to be terrifying. And unsettling … when we’re all 100% for sure gonna fucking die!”

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Shrill and self-righteous though it can be, this starry comedy is McKay’s way of raising the alarm on global warming, an issue that DiCaprio and no less a figure than ex-veep Al Gore have struggled to turn into compelling cinema. Since the ice caps aren’t melting fast enough (for eco-thriller purposes, at least), McKay invents a threat with a six-month deadline to impact, the assumption being that collapsing the time frame for survival would surely — or at least should — light a fire under people’s butts.

Without spoiling just how gonzo things get, such an ultra-cynical scenario can end one of three ways: (1) with the doomsday nerds being proven wrong, (2) with the nincompoop president somehow managing to save the day or (3) with the whole effing planet being obliterated so McKay can “prove” his point. As executed, “Don’t Look Up” plays like the leftie answer to “Armageddon” — which is to say, it ditches the Bruckheimer approach of assembling a bunch of blue-collar heroes to rocket out to space and nuke the approaching comet, opting instead to spotlight the apathy, incompetence and financial self-interest of all involved (including Mark Rylance’s Sir Peter Isherwell, an extreme Asperger’s case — and campaign mega-donor — who combines elements of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Richard Branson to uniquely irritating effect).

“Don’t Look Up” is the latest in McKay’s streak of liberal-leaning current-affairs critiques, and it boasts many of the same strengths as “Vice” and “The Big Short” before it: topicality and a gift for translating complex ideas into glib comic situations on one hand, spastic pacing and an unwieldy mix of acting styles on the other. After a series of more-fun Will Ferrell collaborations (namely “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights”), the writer-director got serious — in terms of his underlying content, at least — with 2015’s best picture-nominated “The Big Short,” a clever if exhausting breakdown of the financial crisis that set McKay on a path of increasingly punchy, stick-it-to-the-man movies. But unless you’re Roland Emmerich, global warming is a tricky concept to dramatize, and McKay can’t decide whether he wants to amuse or upset us … so why not both?

An exaggerated caricature of the family members who make up Trump’s inner circle, Jonah Hill is there merely to get laughs, delivering lines like “I can’t think of another president that I’d ever wanna see in Playboy” about his mom. But what is going on in the throwaway scene where Lawrence’s Chicken Little character suffers a mini-meltdown, pointing around the room and screaming, “You’re going to die! And you’re going to die!” in all directions? Getting the laugh is obviously editor Hank Corwin’s first priority, but often enough, it comes at the price of a kind of formal anarchy (cutting to hi-def shots of bees and CG renderings of outer space).

The plot of “Don’t Look Up” is intricate enough that McKay would have done well to rein in the improv, rather than letting everyone “American Hustle” their way through scenes (only Lawrence emerges unscathed, but then, she had “American Hustle” to practice). The director seems to be aiming for “Dr. Strangelove”-level lunacy, when we probably would’ve settled for “Wag the Dog,” which similarly skewered politics through the lens of showbiz, or “Idiocracy,” the film this one most resembles.

The characters have a relatively tight schedule to save Earth, but it’s virtually impossible to tell what (much less how much time) has transpired between scenes, as Dr. Mindy and Dibiasky’s private lives lurch forward without explanation. At one point, we find her working in a BevMo-style liquor store and falling in love with a stoned skater (Timothée Chalamet, wasted, and also wasted). But wasn’t she a grad student with a quasi-reporter boyfriend when the movie began? So how’d she get here?

Had the movie come out in 2019, I probably would’ve gone along with its overall premise — that, when faced with an extinction-level emergency, our species is not equipped to come together and problem-solve. But I need not remind you that we’ve collectively spent the past two years dealing with another disaster, COVID-19, and though the situation has devolved into a lot of the behavior McKay depicts (enriching billionaires, denying science), the pandemic also showed humanity’s capacity to focus on a common goal, to develop a vaccine in record time and to message a potentially lifesaving mask policy on a global scale.

So maybe we’re not as hopeless as McKay implies, even if a few of the movie’s jokes are dead-on sendups of stunts we’ve witnessed in recent politics. The movie’s title, for example, alludes to the ostrich-minded among us — those whose strategy for ignoring the growing fireball in the sky is simply “don’t look up.” And then there’s the vapid pop star (Arianna Grande) who turns her attention from saving the manatees to the film’s funniest gag, dropping a song called “Just Look Up.” Unless you hate the characters as much as I do, in which case, stick around through the credits for two bonus epilogues, which appear right around the point Netflix auto-directs you to the “Tiger King” sequel, or something else that makes you wish an asteroid would just wipe us all out already. You know what they say about cockroaches’ capacity to survive the end of the world, right?

Comet denial isn’t the same thing as climate-change skepticism, obviously, but once we do acknowledge the problem, we can probably all agree that a Jobs-Musk-Branson billionaire isn’t the person to fix it (or in this case, to mine the comet for precious resources rather than destroying it). McKay’s tone may be grating, even if you don’t have to look far to see some version of what he’s ranting about in the real world. That makes “Don’t Look Up” a different kind of disaster movie, where the threat isn’t what’s to come so much as the state of affairs as they now stand.

Reviewed at Regency Bruin Theatre, Los Angeles, Nov. 18, 2021. MPAA Rating: . Running time: 138 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release and presentation of a Bash Original Content, Hyperobject Industries production. Producers: Adam McKay, Kevin Messick. Executive producer: Jeff Waxman. Co-producers: Ron Suskind, David Sirota, Jennifer Mandeloff, Cate Hardman.
• Crew: Director: Adam McKay. Screenplay: Adam McKay; story: Adam McKay & David Sirota. Camera: Linus Sandgren. Editor: Hank Corwin. Music: Nicholas Britell.  
• With: Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Mark Rylance, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis.

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Don't Look Up

Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn humankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth. Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn humankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth. Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn humankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth.

• David Sirota
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Jennifer Lawrence
• Meryl Streep
• 4.7K User reviews
• 317 Critic reviews
• 49 Metascore
• 24 wins & 95 nominations total

• Dr. Randall Mindy

• Kate Dibiasky

• President Orlean

• Brie Evantee

• Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe

• Jason Orlean

• Peter Isherwell

• Jack Bremmer

• Benedict Drask

• (as Scott Mescudi)

• Dan Pawketty

• Adul Grelio

• General Themes

• Congressman Tenant
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The Chicxulub asteroid Kate Dibiasky mentions hit Earth 66 million years ago in what is now the Gulf of Mexico. The estimated size of the asteroid was 10 kilometers (six miles) wide and resulted in 75% of all life on the planet dying. Known as the dinosaur killer, the asteroid left a crater estimated to be 150 kilometers (93 miles) in diameter and 20 kilometers (12 miles) in depth.
• Goofs Astronomers turn off all the lights and screens within the dome when they take images of the sky.

Kate Dibiasky : You guys, the truth is way more depressing. They are not even smart enough to be as evil as you're giving them credit for.

• Crazy credits In the beginning credits with the telescope, it can be seen that the film is presented with "Bash Original Content".
• Connections Featured in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Jennifer Lawrence/Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats (2021)
• Soundtracks Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing ta F' wit Written by The GZA (as Gary Grice), Method Man (as Clifford Smith), Ol' Dirty Bastard (as Russell Jones), RZA (as Robert Diggs), Ghostface Killah (as Dennis Coles), Inspectah Deck (as Jason Hunter), Raekwon (as Corey Woods) and U-God (as Lamont Hawkins) Performed by Wu-Tang Clan Courtesy of RCA Records By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

User reviews 4.7K

• Dec 25, 2021
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• What is the song Kate is singing to herself at the beginning of the movie?
• December 24, 2021 (United States)
• United States
• Official Netflix
• No miren arriba
• Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Hyperobject Industries
• Province of British Columbia Production Services Tax Credit
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $75,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 18 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital

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Summary Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem — it’s on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a plane ... Read More

Directed By : Adam McKay

Written By : Adam McKay, David Sirota

Don't Look Up

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Leonardo DiCaprio

Dr. randall mindy, jennifer lawrence, kate dibiasky, meryl streep, president orlean, cate blanchett, brie evantee, dr. teddy oglethorpe, jason orlean, mark rylance, peter isherwell, tyler perry, jack bremmer, timothée chalamet, ron perlman, benedict drask, ariana grande, himesh patel, melanie lynskey, michael chiklis, dan pawketty, tomer sisley, adul grelio, paul guilfoyle, general themes, congressman tenant, jack alberts, critic reviews.

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Don’t Look Up review – an A-list apocalyptic mess

Adam McKay’s star-studded climate change satire with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence et al lands its gags with all the aplomb of a giant comet

A comet is on a collision course with Earth. The targets in this shrill, desperately unfunny climate change satire directed by Adam McKay are more scattershot. According to stoner PhD student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor, Dr Randall Mindy (a self-consciously tic-y Leonardo DiCaprio), the asteroid is the size of Mount Everest and due to hit in six months.

The pair try to warn Meryl Streep’s President Orlean about the impending “extinction-level event”, only to find her preoccupied by the midterm elections. They attempt to raise awareness on breakfast TV, but anchors Jack and Brie (Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett) can’t help but give their bad news a positive spin. The only person with enough money to intervene is tech entrepreneur Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), who wants to mine the comet for its “$140tn worth of assets”. Party politics, celebrity gossip and social media memes are swiped at too. It feels cynical, then, when Timothée Chalamet shows up with no real narrative purpose other than to snog Lawrence.

As Garry Marshall’s cursed holiday trilogy Valentine’s Day , New Year’s Eve and Mother’s Day has already proved, an ensemble cast stacked with A-listers is no guarantee of a good time. Neither is McKay’s bombastic, shake-you-by-the-shoulders direction. The smug asides plastered on screen, and the hyperactive inserts of nature documentary footage do nothing to raise the film’s real-life stakes.

In cinemas now and on Netflix from 24 December

• Don't Look Up
• The Observer
• Comedy films
• Jennifer Lawrence
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Cate Blanchett
• Timothée Chalamet

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The 10 Worst Movies of All Time, According to Rotten Tomatoes

The absolute bottom of cinema's barrel, according to critics.

The arts are always subjective, so what exactly constitutes the "worst movie of all time" is, for sure, debatable. After all, quality and worthiness are in the eye of the beholder. Still, it's undeniable that these particular stinkers are abysmally bad for myriad diverse reasons. What's most subjective, perhaps, is: are these movies so-bad-they're-good, or just so, so bad?

Even if they're ultimately enjoyed for all the wrong reasons, having nothing to do with the filmmakers' intentions, awful movies can have some value. The most hated movies can inform aspiring filmmakers of what not to do and can entertain audiences in a morbid, absurd way. Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes' metric on the Tomatometer , these are the ten worst movies in history with an abysmal 0% approval rating from critics .

10 'Jaws: The Revenge' (1987)

Director: joseph sargent.

Steven Spielberg 's 1975 masterpiece Jaws was the original summer blockbuster and as fine a suspense film as has ever been. The immediate sequel was unnecessary, occasionally exciting, and definitely not entirely awful. Jaws 3D is hilarious. However, the fourth entry alternates between hilarious (fleetingly) and it's mostly unwatchable.

Jaws: The Revenge sees the shark carrying a personal vendetta. This is the picture with one of cinema history's most infamous continuity errors, with Michael Caine 's shirt appearing freshly tailored and dry right after he is submerged in the ocean. This is the one where the shark roars like the MGM lion. In short, Jaws 4 is terrible, but Michael Caine doesn't mind it ; after all, shooting it allowed him to buy his mother a house .

Jaws: The Revenge

Watch on Netflix

9 'The Last Days of American Crime' (2020)

Director: olivier megaton.

This interminably long comic-book adaptation briefly trended on Netflix, and that's exactly where its accomplishments end. Taken 2 and Taken 3 director Olivier Megaton 's nearly three-hour stab at Scarface is abrasive and even kind of pathetic. Good actors like Michael Pitt and Édgar Ramírez are given nothing more to do than pose and shout dialogue.

Critics unanimously agreed that The Last Days of American Crime was a crime against cinema . It's so desperate desire to be edgy that it becomes laughable. For The Last Days of American Crime , edginess just equals a lot of screaming and self-conscious camera work.

8 'National Lampoon's Gold Diggers' (2003)

Director: gary preisler.

National Lampoon's Gold Diggers follows two broke losers who enter a web of crime and scheming with rich old women who have nefarious plans of their own. Sounds like a decent enough premise for a vulgar, unassuming, lowbrow good time, right?

Here's the problem, or at least arguably the biggest among myriad problems: Gold Diggers is PG-13. Thus, it does nothing with its premise, not even the cheap, sleazy jokes fans might expect from such a vulgar premise. Gold Diggers is arguably the limpest enterprise under the National Lampoon banner and one of the all-time worst comedies , which is quite a notorious feat.

Buy on Amazon Prime

7 'Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2' (2004)

Director: bob clark.

Oof. The worst movie of one of the best years for cinema ever, 1999's Baby Geniuses was a critically panned exercise in misery. Impressively and infamously, the 2004 sequel (it's probably worth mentioning that 2004 was also an uncommonly strong year for great film overall) is considerably worse.

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 features toddlers trying to thwart a media mogul's ( Jon Voight ) nefarious scheme to alter minds. A few of the noteworthy offenders in this groaner are uncanny valley effects that will haunt your nightmares, halfheartedly crude gags and phoned-in adult performances. Baby Geniuses 2 is outright awful, a horrifyingly dumb movie that insults the intelligence of anyone watching .

6 'Pinocchio' (2002)

Director: roberto benigni.

2002's Pinocchio is a far cry from the 1940 Disney masterpiece - arguably the best animated movie ever . Roberto Benigni 's follow-up to Oscar-winning, if divisive, Life is Beautiful comes off as a vanity project that should have been nipped in the bud.

The hero's journey of a young wooden puppet boy earning his stripes is incredibly touching when told right. However, 2002's Pinocchio has a grown man cosplaying as a child, coming off as off-putting in the extreme . Benigni's performance is questionable at best and repellent at worst, and the English dub, courtesy of a woefully miscast Breckin Meyer , does it no favors.

Watch on Amazon Prime

5 'Gotti' (2018)

Director: kevin connolly.

It's really important to note that John Travolta has, in better films, given some of the best-loved performances in film history. It's not fair to pin this all on him. The ridiculous crime biopic Gotti is like The Godfather from a multiverse where every good filmmaking decision is replaced with a disastrous one.

Gotti is a disastrous effort from actor-turned-director Kevin Connolly . Confused, comically awful, and featuring a script that makes one wrong choice after another, Gotti is a colossal misstep on every level . A side note here: Released one year later, Fred Durst 's The Fanatic was trashed by critics similarly, perhaps a dogpile inspired by resentment at admittedly terrible Gotti . Flawed but never less than entertaining and occasionally inspired, The Fanatic is definitely a superior film to Gotti . It's oddly worth watching.

The story of crime boss John Gotti and his son.

Watch on Hulu

4 'A Thousand Words' (2012)

Director: brian robbins.

Eddie Murphy is one of the past century's most astonishing and revered comedic geniuses. However, A Thousand Words makes the fatal mistake of taking away his greatest asset as a performer: his voice. It's like hiring Channing Tatum for a dance movie where he sits in a chair for most of the runtime.

A queasily family-friendly magic-realism-heavy fable in the vein of (read: ripped off of) Liar Liar , A Thousand Words is arguably Murphy's worst film ever because it completely disregards the edge and verve that's always made him great. Epically misguided and reprehensible as a result, A Thousand Words is a considerable stain in Murphy's resumé.

A Thousand Words

Watch on YouTube

3 'Left Behind' (2014)

Director: vic armstrong.

A few years before the Nicolas Cage renaissance with Pig , Mandy and more, the beloved, distinctly enigmatic Oscar winner was still stuck in mindless drivel like Left Behind . A mostly forgotten adaptation of the religious novels of the same name, it's a sci-fi-tinged tale that concerns the rapture and those left behind.

It really isn't fair to bash faith-based movies, especially because there have been many great Christian movies beloved by critics . Left Behind is boring, though, wasting an intriguing enough premise and the powder-keg potential of its lead . He flies a plane in the movie; that's it. Perhaps that is Left Behind 's worst offense: reducing Nicolas Cage to an "okay" lead.

left behind

2 'one missed call' (2008), director: éric valette.

According to the Tomatometer, this is the worst horror movie of all time . And—yeah, it sucks. The runaway success of Gore Verbinski 's The Ring led to a glut of uninspired J-Horror remakes in the aughts ; this is arguably the worst. Unlike countless bad horror movies, it isn't even fun-bad; it's just monotonous. You could put this on your bedroom TV to help you sleep.

Based on 2003's Chakushin Ari , One Missed Call is a $20 million studio horror movie (where did that money actually go? ) about a killer cell phone. It wants to be The Ring meets Final Destination and laughably fails; in fact, One Missed Call makes these admittedly flawed death-comes-calling movies look like top-tier Hitchcock .

Rent on Amazon Prime

1 ' Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever' (2002)

Director: wych kaosayananda.

According to critics via Rotten Tomatoes, this embarrassingly incompetent cyber-espionage dumpster fire is the single worst movie ever made. World-class performers Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu are trapped in a box-office disaster that's technically an action movie but plays out like it's intentionally designed to lull us to sleep.

Is Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever worth seeing? Is it so bad it's good? The answer is probably not. With one of the all-time worst movie titles , incompetent action, a ludicrous premise, and production values that would give The Room a run for its money, Ballistic is truly terrible and massively boring . And that's just a damn shame.

NEXT: 10 Box-Office Bombs That Became Classic Movies

Netflix’s exciting new comedy thriller already has 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s coming soon

N etflix movies rarely get reviewed much before they come out – it's a natural part of the streaming world that they don't get screened for critics in quite the same way as a normal release.

However, there are exceptions, something Richard Linklater's next movie proves. Hit Man had already been filling seats at film festivals when Netflix picked it up for distribution. 

That was in September 2023, and we've been waiting for a release date ever since. Now, we know Hit Man will be streaming on Netflix from 7 June this year, and it comes as an almost surefire hit. 

Months on the film festival circuit have seen it rack up a whole heap of advance reviews, over 75 of them in fact – and it's sitting on a massive 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes . Maybe all you need to do to be the best streaming service is buy the best films.

It's the sort of score that Netflix executives probably dream of each night, and it suggests the movie is likely to be a banger. It also sits in stark contrast to some of Netflix's other movies recently, like Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon flicks, which have 21% and 16% scores respectively. 

All that leads us to the question of what Hit Man is actually about, although your biggest hint is indeed that title. It stars man of the moment Glenn Powell, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater, as professor who makes a habit of pretending to be an assassin.

Normally this talent is used in police stings, but it looks like things get a lot more complicated when a client (Adria Arjona) manages to get his personal feelings involved.

From there, the movie is apparently way darker than it might look, although it's also very much a comedy throughout, according to reviews – so it's that rare thing, a comedy thriller. 

Netflix apparently paid around $20 million to acquire the movie, so it clearly thinks it's going to be a hit, and those reviews make that look like a smart play, so Netflix subscribers can check it out on 7 June on one of the best streaming devices available today. 

9 new to Prime Video movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes

Prime Video is getting a tidal wave of must-watch movies this month

I write about the new movies arriving on the best streaming services every single month, and I’ve rarely seen a slate as impressive as Prime Video in May 2024. 

It’s hard to know where to start when highlighting the best new Prime Video movies this month. There are so many must-watch flicks to talk about I could create multiple lists. Arguably the biggest new addition is “American Fiction” , a 2023 drama starring Jeffrey Wright that was a major player during awards season and took home an Oscar. 

“American Fiction” is just the tip of the iceberg. There are loads more options across practically every genre. Plus, all of the picks on this list scored 90% or higher on the review site Rotten Tomatoes, indicating that professional critics really liked these movies. 

So, let’s dive into the best new to Prime Video movies to watch this month...

'American Fiction' (2023) 

“American Fiction” is an awards-caliber satirical comedy that takes aim at the rampant exploitation of Black stories in our society. Based on the 2001 novel “Erasure” by American novelist Percival Everett, Jeffrey Wright plays Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a writer living in L.A. who is deeply frustrated with the commercial success of so-called “Black” books that are filled with stereotypes. To assuage his irritation, he writes a novel mocking the literary tropes used in these novels, and much to his surprise — and annoyance — it becomes an instant bestseller. 

But Monk’s newfound success, and praise from his peers, don’t bring him happiness. Instead, he feels only more discontent. While grappling with the monster book he created, he’s also attempting to look after his mother who has Alzheimer’s disease, handle a family tragedy and steer his troubled brother , Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) onto the right path. “American Fiction” is a masterful blend of comedy and drama with some of the best performances of the whole year.

Rotten Tomatoes score:  93% Stream it on  Prime Video from May 14

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'BlacKkKlansman' (2018)

“BlacKkKlansman” is such an outrageous movie that you might assume it’s a work of fiction, but this Spike Lee joint is actually based on a true story. It sees Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first Black officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department, undertake a dangerous undercover mission within the Ku Klux Klan. Aided by a co-worker, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Diver), to act as a surrogate when Stallworth is required to show his face, he eventually rises to the rank of branch leader within the infamous hate group. 

While the movie is set in the 1970s, “BlacKkKlansman” has plenty to say about modern-day America, and the haunting ending includes footage from the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia making Lee’s point extremely clear. Remarkably, despite its serious subject matter and vitally important themes, the movie remains very funny throughout. The performances from Washington and Driver are also stellar.

Rotten Tomatoes score:  96% Stream it on  Prime Video from May 14

'Call Me By Your Name' (2018) 

Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” has given “Dune Part Two” a run for its money as my favorite movie of 2024 so far, but the movie that put the Italian director on the map was 2018’s “Call Me by Your Name.” This tender romantic drama is set in picturesque Northern Italy and sees a 17-year-old named Elio (Timothée Chalamet) begin a passionate affair over a blissful summer with his father’s graduate student assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer). 

The heat of their romance burns bright through the sticky summer season, but as the autumn beckons, their relationship may prove to be just a fleeting moment in time, one to savor but impossible to keep hold of forever. Nominated for a slew of Oscar awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for Chalamet, the film took hold Best Adapted Screenplay in the end. Labeled a “power portrait of first love” in Rotten Tomatoes’ critical census, “Call Me By Your Name” will have you shedding melancholy tears, and put you off eating peaches (don’t ask…)

Rotten Tomatoes score:  94% Stream it on  Prime Video now

'Creed' (2015)

A franchise rarely delivers its knockout punch seven moves in, but that’s exactly what happened in the case of "Creed." This is a new spin on the "Rocky" series but exists within the same canon and features Sylvester Stallone in his iconic role as the underdog champ. "Creed" is a riveting sports drama that quickens the pulse and is so absorbing that you’ll probably be leaping from your sofa seat in excitement during the movie’s well-crafted final bout. 

Michael B. Jordan plays Adonis "Donnie" Johnson, the illegitimate youngest son of former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, and all he wants is his shot at proving that he’s worthy of the Creed name. In steps Rocky Balboa, also a previous world champion, to train Donnie, and the duo’s bond rapidly develops both inside and outside the ring. Rocky and this next generation of Creed learn to rely on each other as the latter prepares for his shot at glory.

Rotten Tomatoes score:  95% Stream it on  Prime Video from May 16

'Pearl' (2022)

The middle chapter of Ti West’s X trilogy that is set to conclude with “MaXXine” later this summer, “Pearl” is technically a prequel to 2022’s “X” but it can be enjoyed by newcomers as well (although, I strongly recommend you watch both movies, as they’re equally excellent). Mia Goth plays the eponymous Pearl, a young woman living on her parent’s Texas ranch in 1918. Her husband is serving in World War I, but Pearl isn’t dreaming of his return, instead, she’s obsessed with a fantasy of becoming a Hollywood movie star. 

When Pearl gets the chance to audition for a touring dance troupe, she believes it could be her shot at stardom, but her ultra-conservative ma and pa (Tandi Wright and Matthew Sunderland) aren’t so keen to support their daughter’s acting ambitions. Pearl decides that she’ll need to take matters into her own hands to achieve her dream. This unnerving psychological horror movie works in large part because of the remarkable leading performance from Mia Goth, with one scene, in particular, a real showcase of her undeniable skills.

Rotten Tomatoes score:  93% Stream it on  Prime Video from May 16

'Schindler's List' (1994)

Among Steven Spielberg’s most celebrated movies of all time — which is really saying something when we’re talking about a director with as many masterpieces as Spielberg — “Schindler’s List” is a harrowing and haunting historical epic that focuses on the heroic work of Oskar Schindler during World War II. The tycoon worked tirelessly to save more than a thousand innocent Jewish people from a terrible fate at the hands of the German forces, and to this day his efforts stand as a testament to the power for good in all of us. 

Liam Neeson plays the titular role and does an excellent job bringing both sides of Schindler to life. The businessman starts as a vain and greedy industrialist but as the horrors of the Holocaust come to light, he becomes an inspirational figure. Along with help from his wife, Emilie Schindler (Caroline Goodall), he was able to keep hundreds of refugees safe from the SS forces. Neeson isn’t the only actor who shines; Ralph Fiennes is fearsome as German officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley is excellent as Schindler's accountant, Itzhak Stern.

Rotten Tomatoes score:  98% Stream it on  Prime Video now

'Whiplash' (2014)

Netflix’s loss is Prime Video’s gain as “Whiplash” left the big red streaming service last month and has now made its current home on Amazon’s platform. This electrifying movie turns 10 this year but remains as pulsating and memorizing as ever. This intense drama centers on Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), an ambitious young jazz drummer at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory. Drafted into the school’s top Studio Band, Andrew thinks he’s on the fast track to fulfilling his musical potential but soon finds himself locked into a battle with the band’s cruel instructor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons).

Fletcher is alarmingly determined to push his students to their limits and isn’t afraid to deploy psychological, and even physical, abuse to extract the best from his pupils. As Andrew becomes increasingly obsessed with earning Fletcher’s seemingly unobtainable approval, he crosses dangerous lines into obsessive territory. Directed by Damien Chazelle, “Whiplash” is more exhilarating than many action movies, and it’s all set within the surprisingly claustrophobic confines of a music academy. It’s a masterpiece of modern cinema. Rotten Tomatoes score:  94% Stream it on  Prime Video now

'Airplane!' (1980)

"Airplane!" is one of those classic comedies that aside from a few cringe-worthy moments (like the seriously questionable "jive" scenes) still holds up today. This disaster film parody draws inspiration from the "Airport" series and "Zero Hour!," a '50s box office dud that "Airplane!" lifts its story beats, central characters and even some bits of dialogue from wholesale. It also pokes fun at leading blockbusters at the time ("Airplane!" hit theaters in 1980) like " Jaws " and "Saturday Night Fever."

The film proved to be a turning point for Leslie Nielsen's career, catapulting him from a dramatic actor into a comedy icon overnight. His character of Dr. Rumack stole the show for his impeccable deadpan delivery and straight-man persona as the chaos onboard grows ever more absurd. He went on to star in "The Naked Gun" franchise as Lt. Frank Drebin, a no-nonsense cop forever getting caught up in ridiculous situations. Just whatever you do, don't call him Shirley. 

Rotten Tomatoes score: 97% Stream it on Prime Video now

'12 Angry Men' (1957)

It's rare to see a film get a 100% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes — a unanimous first-ballot hall of famer in baseball may be the only feat rarer. But if any film was going to have universal acclaim, Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" would be on the shortlist. 

Starring Henry Fonda, this film is often considered the best courtroom drama of all time. The movie centers around the jury deliberation for a case involving an 18-year-old boy accused of killing his abusive father. Many of the jury, in addition to Fonda stars Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E. G. Marshall, and Jack Warden, wish to return a guilty verdict but cannot if there is a reasonable doubt. Don't miss this Best Picture nominee while it's available to watch for free.

Rotten Tomatoes score:  100%  Stream it on  Prime Video  now

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Rory is an Entertainment Editor at Tom’s Guide based in the UK. He covers a wide range of topics but with a particular focus on gaming and streaming. When he’s not reviewing the latest games, searching for hidden gems on Netflix, or writing hot takes on new gaming hardware, TV shows and movies, he can be found attending music festivals and getting far too emotionally invested in his favorite football team. 

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Lord of the rings animated movie first look images: massive armies assemble outside 2 iconic middle-earth locations, brad pitt's reported $300 million movie can still be a box office hit (& top gun: maverick proves it).

Adam McKay's newest satire  Don't Look Up   has been released in select theatres, and it has been met with mixed reviews from critics ahead of its wide release on Netflix. Written and directed by Oscar-winner Adam McKay and featuring an all-star ensemble cast,  Don't Look Up is an undisguised lampoon of the climate crisis. The story follows two low-level astronomers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) desperately attempting to warn the whole world about its impending doom, via a quickly approaching comet. Meryl Streep plays the intransigent president of the United States, and Jonah Hill plays her obnoxious son who also serves as her chief of staff. The film also features Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet, Tyler Perry, Mark Rylance, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Ron Perlman, and a coterie of other recognizable stars.

Adam McKay began his career writing at Saturday Night Live , and he made a name for himself writing and directing over-the-top comedies, usually starring Will Ferrell - such as in the movies   Anchorman ,  Talladega Nights ,  Step Brothers , and more. In the last few years, he has made the transition to prestige director and screenwriter, as both  The Big Short and  Vice were lauded at the Oscars.  Don't Look Up straddles the line between comedy and drama, with mixed success.

Related: Vice's Ending Completely Misses The Point (& The Post-Credits Scene Proves It)

Although expectations were high for  Don't Look Up 's star-studded cast and Oscar-winning screenwriter, the critical response has been very mixed. At the time of writing,  Don't Look Up holds a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes  (based on 102 reviews), which just about ties it with Adam McKay's lowest-rated film  Step Brothers . Although the film has been divisive, those who appreciated  Don't Look Up found it to be an unconventional, relevant, and entertaining vehicle for its cast and message. Here's what some of the positive reviews for  Don't Look Up have said.

Screen Rant:

The film is the ultimate disaster movie, timely in its subject matter and ambitious in its execution. Don’t Look Up can be increasingly outrageous, but it’s fair to say that it parallels reality in the way things play out, which turns even its funniest moments into chilling ones. Bolstered by a fantastic cast, McKay’s film is bold, with sharp commentary, feelings of unease, and comedic beats that work to make a memorable film.

San Francisco Chronicle :

Don't Look Up might be the funniest movie of 2021. It's the most depressing too, and that odd combination makes for a one-of-a-kind experience. Writer-director Adam McKay gives you over two hours of laughs while convincing you that the world is coming to an end.

The Washington Post :

Not content with simply stoking rage and self-righteous superiority, McKay dares to infuse “Don’t Look Up” with an authentic, unironic sense of grief. Sincerity might be the most daring move of all in a film that, at its angriest and most amusing, doesn’t mind tacking perilously close to real life.

Don’t Look Up takes the pulse of contemporary life and finds it crazy, scary and, most of all, funny. It doesn’t all land but enough does to make it a sharp, bold, star-studded treat.

Most of the critics can agree that the performances shine in  Don't Look Up , including Meryl Streep's memorable turn as the president . The most divisive element of the film by far is the effectiveness of the satire. While some found McKay's comet metaphor poignant and chilling, others wrote it off as ham-fisted and trite. Many critics found the film to be overlong and poorly paced, likening it to a  Saturday Night Live sketch that won't end. Here's what some of the negative  Don't Look Up reviews have to say:

Don’t Look Up is both types of blunt: It makes no bones about exactly what the filmmakers think of climate-change deniers and social-media distractions, and it repeatedly blunts the impact of its satire by calling its shots early, often, and loudly.

Instead of using the movie’s laborious more-than-two-hour runtime to allow his ideas to unfold, MacKay hits you with most of them in the first half hour. Being clonked with a meteor would be more subtle.

Vanity Fair :

His film needn’t have offered some actionable strategy for combating climate change apathy, but it could have been more daring or nuanced in its targeting of that indifference. Simply making fun of pop stars and pundits and Trumpism is easy and ineffectual, as either parody or polemic.

IndieWire :

It isn’t smart enough to be a wakeup call or shocking enough to scare people straight, but in the early days of a century in which the world has become a farce of itself and comedians are the only people still afforded $75 million to make serious-minded original cinema, maybe all we can do with the time that remains is stare at our screens and lament how we got here.

Ultimately,  Don't Look Up  has critics divided, with McKay's satire leaving some disappointed and others stunned. Most can agree that the film has its moments, largely thanks to an incredible cast, but whether those moments add up to a film that works seems to be a matter of taste. Given that the film is set to be released on Netflix on December 24 , viewers will soon get the chance to decide for themselves if McKay's latest is a heavy-handed flop or a biting success.

Next: Why Adam McKay Called Aaron Sorkin 'Right-Wing' - Controversy Explained

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8 Things To Know About The New Season Of Doctor Who

What can we expect from the latest iteration of the long-running fan-favorite series showrunner russell t. davies and stars ncuti gatwa and millie gibson offer an inside look..

TAGGED AS: doctor who , Sci-Fi , streaming

Although Doctor Who ’ s 60-year history might seem daunting to a viewer unfamiliar with the venerable British sci-fi series, it is, in fact, very approachable. Periodic changes to the cast and production team offer ample opportunity to reset the clock and reintroduce key details to a younger or newer audience. And on May 10, the show will experience one of its most important refreshes as it joins the Disney+ constellation. When Rotten Tomatoes caught up with new stars Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor) and Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday), they agreed that it feels, as Gibson put it, like “a whole new era.”

“[The scripts] were so ambitious,” Gatwa added. “We’ve not seen this scale of things on British TV. So this feels like there’s a whole new energy coming through.”

But as Doctor Who fans are known for certain proprietary feelings toward the show, many are concerned about Disney’s role in bringing the energy Gatwa mentioned to The Doctor’s latest adventures. So, we’ve put together a guide to what newcomers and seasoned fans need to know about the new era of Doctor Who .

The Basics Of The Doctor

(Photo by Disney+)

Doctor Who , at its core, is about a time-traveling alien known only as The Doctor. Their name is as mysterious as their origins and why they left the planet they once called home. The Doctor travels in a capsule that’s bigger on the inside known as the TARDIS. Disguised as a 1960s British police box prop, it can go anywhere in space and time (except when it can’t). And when grievously injured, The Doctor’s body regenerates, but it also changes its appearance and alters their personality. Armed with these abilities and tools, The Doctor and a lucky human (or two) gad about and see the universe.

Of course, there are many nuances to the above brief — several of which are covered in the premiere episode of the new season, “Space Babies,” written by executive producer Russell T. Davies . When we talked to Davies, he said the elements of lore covered in the episode felt like a “natural” inclusion.

“I was obviously aware professionally that we’re on a new platform, that this would be a big launch, that Ruby Sunday is arriving as the new companion,” he explained. “I had an eye on the bigger picture, but I probably would have done it anyway.”

(Photo by James Pardon/Bad Wolf/BBC Studios)

In various episode commentaries over the years, Davies has said one of the joys of writing Doctor Who is those scenes when The Doctor explains the basics to a new companion — the term used for the human (and occasionally alien) character who travels with The Doctor. “Space Babies” features one of the more extended and joyous versions of this exposition scene. “I don’t think that lovely Space Baby appears until 12 minutes in,” Davies said. We promise, you won’t notice that timeframe as you get to know The Doctor and Ruby, the latest human being to travel in the TARDIS.

“I think that’s a very good sign of how inventive the show is, that it keeps on inspiring me,” Davies said of how the early “Space Babies” scenes play out.

Gatwa added, “And also, as actors, we’re very good at doing exposition really well. So we’ve explained everything that needs to be explained.”

Of course, you can meet The Doctor and Ruby right now, as their debut story, the 2023 Doctor Who Christmas special “ The Church on Ruby Road ”,  is available on Disney+.

The Doctor Has Two Hearts

Differentiating the human-looking Doctor from the bona fide humans he travels with, the character contains two heartbeats. Their bi-pulmonary system has been a feature since at least the 1970s, but Gatwa quoted it to explain why The Doctor’s empathy is so key to the character across all their incarnations. “The Doctor has two hearts and, I think, is very, very in touch with their feelings,” he said. “The Doctor, as a character, has always been really empathetic. So empathetic . That’s one of the main traits of The Doctor.”

Nevertheless, joy and even fear are more acute with Gatwa’s Doctor — known among fans as the Fifteenth Doctor — than some predecessors. “Russell speaks so eloquently about how The Doctor reflects society at the time that he’s around,” Gatwa explained. “And we are in an era [when] we’re a lot more emotionally intelligent than we were, perhaps, in the ’60s. The Doctor’s a reflection of that evolution in our society.”

Davies added, “[Ncuti is] so and expressive and wears emotion on his face like no Doctor before him… You have to up the danger. You have to up the laughs and the joy.”

The Show Is Keeping Its British Voice

One concern fans have expressed online — both on social media and video platforms like YouTube — is concern that the show may lose some of its distinctive Britishness as it becomes a show on a Disney platform. That flavor is key not just to its longevity, but its appeal in the United States, where fans relish the slang, local landmarks, and concerns of the country Doctor Who reveals to them.

We can confirm the voice remains true, with a plot point in “Space Babies” relating directly to the British vernacular. Of course, we won’t say the exact words (“Spoilers,” as River Song might say), but in talking to Davies about it, he confirmed the deep-cut British references and tone remain true to the program as it has existed over the decades.

“They get the British voice,” he said of the partnership with Disney. Of course, being a fan of the show in its original 1963-1989 form — he would later spearhead the series’ revival in 2005 — he sympathizes with the fans’ concerns. “That’s exactly what I would worry about if I was outside the show, and to be absolutely honest, that’s why I’m here,” he explained. “One of the reasons I’m here was to protect against that happening.”

At the same time, Davies was happy to see Disney on the side of The Doctor. “It’s been a really lovely process to see them falling in love with the show [while] doing the early stages of production. I would refer to an episode like ‘Blink.’ They’d all go off and watch ‘Blink,’ and then they’d all come back going, ‘Oh my God, this is the best show in the world,’” he said. “It was a real joy to see.”

But coming back to the worry about the British voice, he said growing up in the UK, he was exposed to Gilligan’s Island references thanks to imported US television despite the series itself never airing in the UK. “I do have an idea what Gilligan’s Island is because it’s been referred to so often, but I think we all quite freely cross cultures and don’t stop. When we get a reference that we don’t understand, we all think, ‘Oh, that’s a world I haven’t discovered yet,’” he said.

He also teased an upcoming episode will feature a joke “so obscure, you had to know your British television from the 1970s in order to get it.” Although he stopped a script read-through to see how many people understood the joke, it remains in the show.

The Disney Factor Can Be Seen

The partnership with Disney provides some differences, though, in terms of production. The scale, as mentioned by Gatwa and Gibson, is one element. The dinosaurs glimpsed in the trailer and a preview scene available online are just one example.

Another is the ambition of the episodes, which include a recreation of 1963 London (and Abbey Road Studios as it looked at the time) in the second episode, “The Devil’s Chord” — available alongside “Space Babies” this Friday — the Regency Era-set “Rogue,” due out in June, and a mysterious episode known as “73 Yards.” Of that one, Gibson said, “It gave me a lot of Black Mirror vibes… I knew we were in for a treat with Russell’s writing as soon as I read that.”

Yet one more aspect of the Disney factor is the roster of guest stars, which includes Neil Patrick Harris — who appeared in November’s 60th anniversary special, “The Giggle” — Jinkx Monsoon as a character called Maestro in “The Devil’s Chord,” and Jonathan Groff in “Rogue.”

“These are worldwide stars that any show would give their eye teeth to have in them,” Davies said of the guests.

The Doctor Revels In Mysteries

Starting from its debut episode in 1963, Doctor Who has always featured mysteries — including The Doctor’s true name (hence the show’s title). When Davies brought the program back in 2005 (after other producers made a failed attempt in 1996 with a TV movie starring Paul McGann as The Doctor), he made a season-long mystery a feature of the format. His successors, showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, carried on the tradition to varying degrees, but in returning to the show for its 60th Anniversary last year, Davies amped the mysteries into overdrive with more than a few on display in the new season.

He said the inclusion of more mysteries came as a result of Disney loving the questions left at the end of “The Church on Ruby Road” regarding Ruby’s parents. “It’s my job to leap up and listen when an executive says that,” he said. In terms of creating a television show, Davies felt the mysteries are part-and-parcel with streaming programs, as they keep the viewer invested in an overall tale even as each episode of Doctor Who tells a complete adventure.

“If you want to drop in and watch any random episode, you won’t be left behind by the complications of the plot,” he added. “But there’s a lot going on.” We’ll dive a little deeper into those mysteries next week.

And as for older mysteries like The Doctor’s name? Don’t worry about those. Part of Doctor Who ’s appeal is the questions that will never be answered.

The Introduction Of The Supernatural

Although Doctor Who has always played with ideas like ghosts, vampires, and gods, they’ve generally been revealed as suitably advanced technology or aliens gearing up for an invasion. But with “The Church on Ruby Road,” legit goblins invaded the show’s reality and, as Davies has mentioned here and there, it will lead to a full-on exploration of the supernatural as supernatural.

“You have to make the threats so great that [The Doctor] shows terror,” Davies explained to us. “I thought these fantasy [things] were simply the best way to do that. I also love writing it. You start to bend the laws of reality and The Doctor has to fight very hard to win. Suddenly, he can’t press that button on that computer that saves the day.”

But if less fantastical sci-fi is to your liking, Davies said the third episode of the year, “Boom!” — written by Moffat — is “proper, hard science fiction that obeys strict physical rules.”

He also mentioned that the show’s ability to move between grounded sci-fi and flights of fancy allows it to be “the best of both worlds.”

And Then There’s The Running

If there’s one thing you need to know about Doctor Who it is this: everybody runs.

“What’s the longest you think we ran?” Gibson asked of Gatwa when we inquired if they did extra cardio in preparation to film the season.

“It’s not even the length… It’s to sprint straight away and then take, take, take, take. So it’s short bursts of running for about an hour,” Gatwa said.

“Running in my ’60s boots was hard,” Gibson added.

Gatwa is somewhat worried about his running form, as The Doctor is always on the move, but we imagine fans old and new will enjoy his stride.

The 60-Year History

(Photo by Everett Collection)

One of the other delights found within Doctor Who is the discovery of its past. While many episodes serve as great entry points — 1970’s “Spearhead from Space,” 2005’s “Rose,” and 2010’s “The Eleventh Hour” among them — each treat the past as something you can learn about, but do not necessarily need to enjoy the show. That said, each story (even the less successful ones) offer some interesting shade, clue, or concept.

And since the classic series is available in the US on BritBox, and the 2005-2022 series is over on Max, it is possible to spend a long time with the previous Doctors. “When the season finishes, if you are missing it and [want to] feel whole, then just binge 60 years,” Gibson said.

“[There is] 60 years of magical TV that they can catch up on,” Gatwa said. “Get your big bag of Doritos and your big super can of Coke.”

Of course, for those who are somehow still unfamiliar with The Doctor, the new season is the current best place to start.

Doctor Who: Season 1 (2024) debuts on Friday, May 10, 2024 on Disney+ and midnight Saturday, May 11 in the UK and Ireland on BBC iPlayer.

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FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA First Reviews And Rotten Tomatoes Score Revealed - Is It Better Than FURY ROAD?

The first reviews for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga are finally here, and as well as sharing excerpts from the early verdicts out of Cannes, we have a Rotten Tomatoes score to go with them. Check it out...

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga  had its splashy world premiere at Cannes earlier today and, as we first reported on SFFGazette.com , the first reviews are now in for George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road prequel.

The movie received a 7-minute standing ovation in France and, as we write this, it sits at 87% on Rotten Tomatoes . While not a perfect score, the consensus is clearly incredibly positive overall, with the action, visuals, and cast - led by Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth - all receiving praise. 

In fact, it appears Furiosa only falls short in the eyes of some because it didn't live up to their lofty expectations (in other words, it's not as good as 2015's Fury Road ).

Overall, it's looking like Miller has another winner on his hands, and providing those all-important box office numbers are good, then we're sure the filmmaker's plans for yet another Mad Max prequel (focusing on the title character) will come to fruition.

The first reviews are in for #Furiosa : A Mad Max Saga - currently it's Fresh at 87% on the Tomatometer, with 30 reviews: https://t.co/iwxkuXKl9Y pic.twitter.com/986LpUVPm8 — Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) May 15, 2024

Here's what critics are saying about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga :

With all due respect to Miller's bonkers vision, and his incredible ability to put that vision on screen, Furiosa seems like one of those spin-off graphic novels that plug the gaps between two films in a franchise, but which don't quite match up to the films themselves. [3/5] - BBC

Nine years later comes a prequel, Furosia: A Mad Max Saga, and Miller, now seemingly ageless at 79 (he was 34 when the first one came out) has perhaps given birth to the greatest Max yet, a wheels-up, rock-and-rolling epic that delivers the origin story of the title character Charlize Theron picked up in Fury Road when she was about 26. - Deadline

The chassis may look familiar but there is a very different engine driving Furiosa from that of Fury Road: it’s a rich, sprawling epic that only strengthens and deepens the Max-mythology. It shall ride eternal! [5/5] - Empire

In a sense, Dementus is a character artificially contrived to give Furiosa someone to face off with, a warlord distinct from Immortan Joe. But Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth are a great pairing and Taylor-Joy is an overwhelmingly convincing action heroine. She sells this sequel. [4/5] - The Guardian

Furiosa’s ultimate reckoning with Dementus fulfils the revenge promise even if Miller can’t resist stoking the mythic aspect by having alternate versions of the warlord’s fate, attempting to make it the stuff of legend. This time, not quite. - The Hollywood Reporter

George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga weaves a hero’s journey of epic proportions, ushering in a powerful reflection on what it means to live and love in a dying world. [10/10] - IGN

How do we brave the world’s cruelties? By refusing to become them ourselves. Such an internally combusting prequel might seem like a strange lead-in to a movie that spit fire in every direction, but don’t you worry: George Miller still has what it takes to make it epic. [A-] - Indie Wire

This action franchise set in sun-blasted sandscapes is evergreen. A special place in Valhalla awaits George Miller. [4/5] - Total Film

The most important thing to say about 'Furiosa,' however, is that what it all adds up to is a movie that can be darkly bedazzling, and that will be embraced and defended in a dozen passionate ways — but it’s one that, to me, falls very short of being a 'Mad Max' home run. - Variety

So tip your the greasy, dusty, battered hat to George Miller, who is pulling off some kind of ridiculous feat by turning these grungy action movies into a grand saga. - The Wrap

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FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA - Action-Packed First Clips See Dementus And Furiosa Go To War

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‘happy gilmore 2’ starring adam sandler officially ordered by netflix.

A follow-up to the beloved 1996 comedy is confirmed to be in the works at the streamer.

By James Hibberd

James Hibberd

Writer-at-Large

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It’s happening: Netflix has officially ordered a sequel to Happy Gilmore .

The streamer announced at its upfront presentation to advertisers on Wednesday that it was moving forward with Happy Gilmore 2 with Adam Sandler on board to reprise his role as the titular rage golfer.

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Sandler previously told the Dan Patrick Show that the film was in development. “Dude, we’ve been talking about a Happy 2 and we’re working on some stuff… But don’t tell anybody.”

Drew Barrymore also teased the announcement on her talk show, telling viewers, “This just in, I have breaking news…. I’ll just say this, from my source, that [ Happy Gilmore 2 ] is in process.”

Christopher McDonald who played the golfer Shooter McGavin the first film, has suggested his character might return in the sequel. “I saw Adam [Sandler] about two weeks ago, and he says to me, ‘McDonald, you’re gonna love this,'” McDonald said during a radio interview. “I said, ‘What? ‘ He says, ‘How about that,’ and he shows me the first draft of Happy Gilmore 2 .'”

Sandler has a $250 million Netflix deal and the actor-comedian has produced eight titles for the streaming service, ranging from the somewhat notorious Western parody  The Ridiculous Six  to dramedy  Sandy Wexler  to his acclaimed stand-up special  100% Fresh  (which ended up at 90 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, in case you’re wondering). His most recent was the well reviewed teen comedy You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah  which premiered on Netflix last August.

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