Being celebrated by industry peers and embraced by audiences are two of the biggest and most obvious barometers of success in Hollywood, so if those were the only pair of indicators being taken into account, you’d have thought Adam McKay’s apocalyptic comedy Don’t Look Up was a universally-beloved delight.
Not only is it the streaming service’s second most-watched original movie of all-time behind only the star-studded action epic Red Notice, but the acerbically absurd look at how humanity would react to the end of the world found no shortage of awards recognition, with the A-list offering netting a trio of Academy Award nominations including Best Original Screenplay, as well as four nods apiece from the BAFTAs and Golden Globes.
And yet, a lukewarm Rotten Tomatoes score of just 56 percent hinted that Don’t Look Up resolutely failed to match the anticipation that was drummed up prior to its premiere on the platform, especially when the ensemble was ludicrously stacked to the rafters with A-list talent, while The Big Short and Vice had proven McKay’s chops when it came to painting pressing real-world issues with a thick coat of satirical paint.
It wouldn’t be stretch in the slightest to say that Don’t Look Up can quite comfortably be called one of the company’s most polarizing in-house exclusives ever; some people love it, others detest it with a burning passion, but at least some common ground has finally been found on the forums of Reddit.
While a thread questioning why people didn’t like the film ignited a firestorm that saw upwards of 3000 commenters weigh in with their opinions, the recurring theme is that Mark Rylance delivered a phenomenal performance as the unsettlingly upbeat tech guru Peter Isherwell. It’s a small victory, but at least the Don’t Look Up discourse has finally unified about something at long last.
