Metacritic reviews

Shephard's steady direction and clever script allow things to hit exactly the right note. Deutch, O'Brien, and Isaac are all terrific, and "Not Okay" is one of the most pleasant surprises of 2022.

Being perpetually online sucks, but movies about it don’t have to, as Not Okay shows time and again.

Writer and director Quinn Shephard's Not Okay takes thing near to the knuckle, but the biting jet-black comedy never loses sight of its intentions, deftly balancing humor and bile with heart and hard-hitting themes.

The movie is an incessant interrogation of what our young people are becoming, what they want and what the rules are to get it, yet its humor and humility make it stand out as one of the better recent satires.

Shephard jabs well-placed elbows at modern day media celebrity, where the public’s attention veers in an instant from tutting about death to applauding as Danni does goat yoga.

Not Okay is not the first film to satirize the age of influencers, but it is easily the most unsettling.

Shepard’s reach might exceed her grasp, but there’s no question that she takes risks and is a filmmaker of notable promise.

Not Okay doesn’t make any points that, now over a decade into the ubiquity of social media, aren’t painfully obvious.

Big swings can make for big misses, and that’s the situation writer-director Quinn Shephard’s internet satire-screed “Not Okay” finds itself in, lining up all kinds of juicy targets regarding fame and shame in our social media age, but proving not so discerning about character, humor, and story when it comes to following-through.

Not Okay wants to be kind of a goof on the subject. Deutch seems to want to make it one. But former child actress turned writer-director Quinn Shephard doesn’t appear to be on the same page with this heavy-handed mope.