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Leave the World Behind has risen to number 1 in the Netflix film rankings.
The film, an apocalyptic drama starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Kevin Bacon, was produced by Higher Ground Productions, the company founded by former US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.
Adapted from Rumaan Alam's 2020 novel of the same name, Leave the World Behind follows a society that unravels after technological infrastructure, from phones to televisions, begins to break down.
Although “Leave the World Behind” rose to the top of the streaming service's charts, surpassing films like “Family Switch” and the animated film “The Grinch,” it received mixed reviews from critics, and audience reactions (not to mention by Elon Musk) were even more polarized.
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, “Leave the World Behind” boasts a positive critic score of 75 percent, while its audience score is just 42 percent.
On social media, viewers voiced their verdict on the film, with many expressing the same complaint: the film simply couldn't justify its 140-minute running time.
“Leave the World Behind is a strange, often funny, often stupid and ultimately cynical film. It takes the film an awfully long time to finally get to the point, and when it does, the point is cartoonishly pessimistic and narratively unsatisfying. I didn’t like it,” one viewer commented on X/Twitter.
“I watch Leave the World Behind. Here's why this is a mistake. I want to watch other things and this movie is almost two and a half hours long,” another complained.
Leave The World Behind wasn't bad, but it certainly didn't take nearly 2.5 hours. If you ask me, most movies don't have to be longer than 50 hours. But no one asked me, lmao. So I’ll save you all the investment,” someone else argued.
Julia Roberts in “Leave the World Behind”
(Netflix)
Meanwhile, Musk is being ridiculed for complaining about an “inaccuracy” portrayed by Tesla in the film.
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Among the films that will follow “Leave the World Behind” on the Netflix charts is the body swap comedy “Family Switch.”
Family Switch was released earlier this month and sparked some controversy among viewers due to a joke about an “incestuous” kiss.
In the McG-directed film, four family members swap bodies, with a married couple taking the place of their two children and vice versa.
In the controversial scene, the two children are forced to kiss in their parents' bodies at a social gathering.
Leave the World Behind and Family Switch are both available to stream on Netflix now.