Adam McKay’s reinvention from director of broad Will Ferrell comedies to the Academy Award-winning filmmaker behind awards season favorites The Big Short and Vice has seen his latest feature Don’t Look Up pegged for success since the project was first announced.
A topical, satirical, sociopolitical satire that stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as two low-level astronomers trying to warn everyone about an impending comet set on a collision course with Earth had been heavily touted as Netflix’s biggest Oscars hope, and the one to beat in many of the biggest categories.
However, the review embargo has now lifted, and the response is a lot more muted than we’d been expecting. As you can see from the reactions below, Don’t Look Up is proving to be a polarizing prestige picture.
The praise is lofty, but the negatives being bandied around are criticizing McKay for getting a little too smug for his own good, which is never a good look for any movie. Don’t Look Up comes to theaters this Friday before hitting Netflix on December 24, so we’ve got a couple of weeks to go before we discover whether or not subscribers are going to love or loathe the star-studded cross-country adventure.