Divisive Leonardo DiCaprio Movie Don't Look Up Smashes Netflix Record

It's proving to be one of the most divisive movies of the past 12 months, but Don't Look Up is still smashing records.

The long-awaited disaster movie stars some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep.

It centres on two astronomers who try desperately to warn the world's decidedly uninterested media of a comet that's about to hit Earth and destroy all life.

But while some think it's the best thing since sliced bread, others have criticised it for being two hours and 25 minutes of smug drivel.

However, that's not affected its performance, with millions of people tuning in since its release last month.

And according to reports, the movie was watched for a total of 152,290,000 hours globally between 27 December and 2 January, a record for the streaming site.

Netflix

To put that into some kind of context, the nearest challenger to Don't Look Up is Sandra Bullock's new movie The Unforgivable, which boasts 21,310,000 hours viewed.

Reacting to the impressive stat, the film's director, Adam McKay, said: "I’m straight up flabbergasted by this."

But as I said, the film's reception has been rather divided.

While it has been widely praised for its not-so-subtle message about the risk of us all ignoring the threat of climate change, as a piece of cinema, things have been a bit more hit and miss. 

On Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews to give viewers a bit of an overall consensus, the film has a fairly mediocre critics’ score of 54 percent – based on a total of 239 reviews. 

Netflix

As ComicBook.com reports, this marks the first ‘rotten’ film that DiCaprio has starred in since Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby back in 2013, which had a 48 percent rating. 

The years in between have seen some of DiCaprio’s best work, with 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street (79 percent), 2015 flick The Revenant (78 percent), and Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood in 2019 (85 percent) - all certified ‘fresh’ by the site. 

That eight-year winning streak only really equates to three films, but there’s no denying that they’re all big’uns. 

Don’t Look Up, meanwhile, hasn’t been met with such critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone reviewer David Frear concluding: "Don't Look Up is a blunt instrument in lieu of a sharp razor, and while McKay may believe that we're long past subtlety, it doesn't mean that one man's wake-up-sheeple howl into the abyss is funny, or insightful, or even watchable."

Netflix

James Berardinelli from ReelViews wrote: "Despite a to-die-for cast and a seemingly can't-miss premise, Don't Look Up is a failure on too many levels and, although the viewing numbers may satisfy Netflix, it's a shock to see such a high-profile film self-destruct."

That said, not all the critic reviews were negative, with Us Weekly’s Mara Reinstein referring to the film as ‘so-sharp-it-hurts satire that skewers our current state of politics, technology and celebrity culture within the context of an asteroid headed to Earth’. 

Anton Bitel from Sight & Sound also said the 'broad, crass, scattergun comedy' is one that 'fairly reflects the age of distraction being so grimly targeted'.