Review of Leave the World Behind

Any movie that has President Obama and the former First Lady as executive producers is enough to be polarizing but this movie, would divide audience down political lines just based on its premise. It's one of those "It's Near the End of the World as we Know It, and Do We Feel Fine" movies, a rather shameless composite of may older movies - some good, some mediocre, some bad: Signs, The Purge, 12 Monkeys, Cloverfield, Donnie Darko, The Mist, A Quiet Place, Take Shelter, Deep Impact, The Birds, The Happening, Crash (the Sandra Bullock one), Fight Club, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and even Red Dawn and Maximum Overdrive. Heck I even saw some directorial touches channeled from PT Anderson's Magnolia. I suppose if you've seen none of these movies, you may be entertained. But at 2 hours and 21 minutes, the movie moves at a sluggish pace. Despite the respected actors involved, some scenes were cringe-worthy, and even laughable (screaming at the deer immediately comes to mind). Far too many shots of characters looking at some activity and not allowing the audience to see until 4 or 5 minutes into the shot. The director was behind Mr. Robot, a TV series that I tried to get into but couldn't. The overall message of the movie - that unless we start uniting as a country (and a world), doom my befall us - is commendable to a degree and depicted with a heavy hand. But all of this doesn't gel until the last 30 minutes of the movie. The behavior of some of the characters was inexplicable. Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali dancing to a hip hop record while things are falling apart just seemed contrived. The movie would have been more successful had it been trimmed down a bit and left the arty "can you believe what they are seeing?" shots behind.