Don't Look Up
Netflix | Release Date: December 10, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
49
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 52 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
29
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 7, 2021
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. Read full review
80
Film ThreatBobby LePireJan 13, 2022
Fortunately, the core cast is phenomenal, especially leads DiCaprio and Lawrence, who are both luminous and effortless. Combine that with the fantastic editing and the jaw-dropping ending, and one gets a flawed but entirely worthwhile viewing experience. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamDec 10, 2021
Performances pop as Earth gets the chop, with US politics, big business and social media going up in flames. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyDec 9, 2021
There’s something oddly satisfying about the way McKay's film lets us laugh at our own doom. Read full review
80
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiDec 7, 2021
Don’t Look Up is a deeply unsettling yet darkly humorous watch. It has just the right amount of comedy and zeal without losing sight of its message or the tension bubbling beneath the surface. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerDec 7, 2021
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. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 9, 2021
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. Read full review
75
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiDec 9, 2021
If McKay crafted the most enjoyable parts of his satire with a scalpel, somebody should’ve handed him a machete to chop the script down some. The film clocks in at nearly two hours and 10 minutes, and we grow exhausted by it as the surprises stop and the ending becomes inevitable. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattDec 7, 2021
Frankly, it's almost enough just to watch them all run around in states that range from manic panic to Zen serenity while McKay employs his usual coterie of meta tricks and treats. But it's hard not to long for the shrewder movie that might have been: Not just a kooky scattershot look, but a deeper truer gaze into the void. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 7, 2021
This is a stunningly accurate portrayal of our current climate. And it’s not pretty. Read full review
67
UproxxVince ManciniDec 18, 2021
Don’t Look Up is a strong idea (with story credit to McKay and journalist David Sirota), and lots of the individual jokes work, but at times it gets so caught up trying to make fun of so many different things that it seems to lack an internal logic. Satire in and of itself isn’t quite a story. Read full review
67
The Film StageEthan VestbyDec 7, 2021
If it bears the fault of preaching to the choir’s anger more than offering real structural critique, one has to begrudgingly admire some qualities of his newest film, even as being annoyed for a good portion of the runtime is still expected. Read full review
64
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzDec 7, 2021
Conceived as a climate-change metaphor, but given an oily new layer thanks to the pandemic, the film’s conceit could be sharply effective, in careful hands. But McKay knows only of punching down with meaty fists, so the result is a messy, smarmy assault. Read full review
63
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckDec 9, 2021
That the comet is a stand-in for climate change is hardly a secret going into Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s exceedingly watchable, funny and star-studded yet somewhat chaotic satire. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 7, 2021
From Streep and DiCaprio and Lawrence through the supporting players, Don’t Look Up is filled with greatly talented actors really and truly selling this material — but the volume remains at 11 throughout the story when some changes in tone here and there might have more effectively carried the day. Read full review
60
The AtlanticDavid SimsDec 23, 2021
The satire of Don’t Look Up is anguished and clear to the point of feeling bludgeoning. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 23, 2021
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. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 14, 2021
McKay has a point, though his frame of reference hardly stretches beyond the United States, and the stink of localized political contempt all but overpowers the plot. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyDec 9, 2021
Don’t Look Up’s driving thesis – roughly, “look at all these morons!” – is so basic it’s only really possible to respond to it as a hit-and-miss actors’ showcase. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeDec 9, 2021
There are decent jokes all the way through, but, even at a groaning 145 minutes, the film feels overstuffed. Read full review
60
Little White LiesHannah StrongDec 7, 2021
It all feels a little toothless. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerDec 7, 2021
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. Read full review
55
ABC NewsPeter TraversDec 10, 2021
If you cherrypick the good stuff from a sea of unfocused choices, McKay’s all-star comedy (Leo! JLaw! Meryl!) about impending doom has its playful and provocative pleasures. But the laughs don’t stick in the throat the way they must in a screwball farce that ends in utter hopelessness. Read full review
50
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJan 6, 2022
The failure of topicality in “Don’t Look Up” is, not least, that the movie’s cynically apolitical view of politics contributes to the frivolous and self-regarding media environment that it decries—starting with the very celebrity power that the movie marshalls to score its points. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 23, 2021
With a generic cast, Don’t Look Up would have been a disappointment. With this star-studded cast, the classification of a “missed opportunity” doesn’t do it justice; it feels closer to a tragedy. Read full review
50
VoxAlissa WilkinsonDec 18, 2021
For me, the bludgeoning tends to blunt the entertainment value. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 10, 2021
McKay’s just as “right” about his target as ever. But the tone of this “Deep Impact/Wag the Dog” mashup is off. It veers towards strident, and as the clutter gathers around it, it drifts into dull. The jokes dry up and only a few members of his cast are veterans of “let make this funnier on the set” filmmaking. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekDec 9, 2021
McKay keeps piling on the sardonic observations, and the outlandishly ill-behaved characters, long after the movie has crumpled under their weight. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyDec 9, 2021
Flat-footed and far too broad, it’s a reminder why “Saturday Night Live” skits don’t run two hours and 18 minutes. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard LawsonDec 9, 2021
Where Don’t Look Up finds its strength is in its lead performances, which can’t be undone even by the film’s exhausting, rapid-fire editing and McKay’s aggressive indicating toward his own punchlines. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 7, 2021
Nothing about the foolishness and outrageousness of what the movie shows us — no matter how virtuosically sliced and diced by McKay’s characteristically jittery editor, Hank Corwin — can really compete with the horrors of our real-world American idiocracy. Read full review
50
CNNBrian LowryDec 7, 2021
In a grand science fiction tradition, Don't Look Up uses a disaster-movie framework as a metaphor for a reality-based crisis, with a huge comet hurtling toward Earth as a surrogate for indifference to addressing climate change. Yet this star-studded, extremely provocative satire at times veers off course itself, partially undermining its admirable qualities with the broadness of its tone. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDerek SmithDec 7, 2021
Like Vice before it, the film too often uses satire as a tool of castigation rather than as a means of truly attacking the status quo. Read full review
45
Paste MagazineBrianna ZiglerDec 14, 2021
As is, Don’t Look Up is an exhausting and meandering “What if? But also, what now?” If the world really is going to end in my lifetime, these were 145 minutes that I’m never getting back. Read full review
42
Original-CinLiam LaceyDec 10, 2021
Running a long 145 minutes, it’s bleakly cartoonish polemic with few laughs or dramatic peaks, despite a climactic mad-as-hell speech from DiCaprio, some ineffectual pantomiming from Streep, and some third-act forced solemnity. Read full review
42
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonDec 7, 2021
The biggest problem with McKay’s stuff is that he thinks he’s the next Paddy Chayefsky, bringing down untold wisdom from on high and proclaiming disdain at the blinkered, media-soaked vagaries of our world. Unfortunately, he’s bought too deeply into his hype as a vivid truth-teller of society’s ills, and that smugness has infected too much of his films’ fabric. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichDec 7, 2021
And so we’re left with a very sweaty film that strains to be funny, but one that’s also itching to argue that it’s lack of funniness is precisely the point. Some problems can’t be solved by celebrities alone, and the most subversive thing about “Don’t Look Up” is ultimately how — in its own impotent way — it weaponizes its wild star power to make that point. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansJan 11, 2022
The smug asides plastered on screen, and the hyperactive inserts of nature documentary footage do nothing to raise the film’s real-life stakes. Read full review
40
PolygonJoshua RiveraJan 5, 2022
Humor is subjective, but giving an example of Don’t Look Up’s specific jokes feels like a spoiler, depriving you of one of the three times you’ll likely experience a genuine laugh. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreDec 22, 2021
It’s hard to think about who, exactly, is going to be moved to make changes to how they live their lives by Don’t Look Up, a climate-change allegory that acquired accidental COVID-19 relevance, but that doesn’t really end up being about much at all, beyond that humanity sucks. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleTrace SauveurDec 9, 2021
I’d be hard-pressed to find a filmmaker who, in a general sense, I agree with but whose movies irritate me in the way that Adam McKay’s do. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonDec 7, 2021
Clearly a commentary on global warming, which folds neatly into a treatise on our ongoing Covid-19 crisis, Don’t Look Up takes aim at plenty of ills — especially the scourge of science-deniers. But a smug, self-satisfied approach proves insufficient at addressing the legitimate woes at core of this picture. Read full review
40
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaDec 7, 2021
Worst of all, these final moments of the film make it abundantly clear that as a storyteller and a filmmaker, McKay has absolutely nothing to say about the topics he's skewering, and he shouldn't have even bothered to try. This is a hollow waste of time and talent; a comedy whose idea of humor is simply pointing a finger at something and chuckling obnoxiously. We, as a society, don't just deserve better leaders. We deserve better satire, too. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 7, 2021
This film could have done something more convincing with that mode of reverse-vertigo hinted at in its title: that fear and willed blindness about what looms over us. But if the movie helps to do something about climate change, such critical objections are unimportant. Read full review
38
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenFeb 10, 2022
The comic setups take longer than they should, then the punchlines give you a violent bear hug when they should be lightly slapping you on the cheek before quickly moving on to the next gag. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comNick AllenDec 10, 2021
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. Read full review
33
The PlaylistJason BaileyDec 7, 2021
It’s cheap, and crass, and by the conclusion, downright infuriating. Read full review
30
Rolling StoneDavid FearJan 3, 2022
It’s a disaster movie in more ways than one. Should you indeed look up, you may be surprised to find one A-list bomb of a movie, all inchoate rage and flailing limbs, falling right on top of you. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 23, 2021
A plausible premise, right? Yes, absolutely, but it’s squandered in a slapdash, scattershot sendup that turns almost everyone into nincompoops, trivializes everything it touches, oozes with self-delight, and becomes part of the babble and yammer it portrays. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyDec 7, 2021
A cynical, insufferably smug satire stuffed to the gills with stars that purports to comment on political and media inattention to the climate crisis but really just trivializes it. Dr. Strangelove it ain’t. Read full review
30
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 7, 2021
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. Read full review
20
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeDec 8, 2021
A film with all the right things to say about how government, the media, and corporations ignore the emerging disaster of climate change, but couched within a satire so lumbering that it’s enough to turn a tree hugger into a pro-fracker. Read full review
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