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Despite the appearance of glowing Disclosure Day reviews, I knew immediately the new Steven Spielberg film was going to be one that sparked a lot of different reactions. I know this because in my own party of four, thoughts were mixed, and that was true of the entire crowd in the theater. Still, one thing I thought was absolutely universal was the humor in the 2026 movie release, including one scene that had me literally laughing out loud. Turns out, not everyone is nearly as enamored as I was.
Emily Blunt And Wyatt Russell Got Hammy In That Cell Phone Scene
Early in Disclosure Day, Emily Blunt’s Margaret and her boyfriend Jackson make an escape from the hospital as she starts to realize there are some people looking to detain her. As part of this, she’s told to ditch her cell phone, but as we know, these days cells phones are quite indestructible.
What follows is like 90 second of utter hijinks. Margaret makes Jackson ditch his phone and then back over it; however, he’s bad at driving and fails pretty spectacularly. They go at it again and it's even more ridiculous. Eventually, they manage to crush the phone, but it takes significantly more effort than you’d assume. I found this scene very funny; other people on the Internet did not.
Not Everyone Loved Disclosure Day’s Comedy
Critic Scott Menzel took to X (Twitter) to call the flick one of “the strangest” he’s seen in a while, and he particularly hated the cell phone scene in question.
Disclosure Day is one of the strangest movies that I’ve seen in a while. At its best, it feels like classic Spielberg magic dating back to Close Encounters and ET. At its worst, it had me questioning every creative decision being made. The scene where Emily Blunt throws her cell phone out the car window was straight out of an Ed Wood movie and I cannot believe it made it into the final cut of the film. What a truly bizarre experience.
It’s not just Menzel, either. A lot of people in the same thread on X called out the cell phone scene as being the moment they felt was most cringe in the whole movie.
- I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Almost left 5 times and bolted out the door as soon as the last line was uttered. Re: phone - Spielberg cut out a scene on the same ridiculous wavelength in Raiders.
- Spielberg's boomer nature was starting to become apparent in Ready Player One. He absolutely doesn't understand how the internet or video games work, and it made the movie pretty silly.
- Yes the cell phone out the car, and especially the minute after where they’re trying to get the car to move back and forth to crush it - not sure why that was in the Final Cut.
Not to mention one fan could not get over how the movie just does not get how cell phones work in general. They wrote:
Don't forget the flip burner phones. they always made a point to mention it was a burner phone before snapping the phone at the flip joint like that's gonna destroy the phone lol. I hate to tell you guys but the phones still on you just broke the stop part lol.
We know from Disclosure Day’s box office run the movie had a hot first week and then fell quite a bit whilst competing with Toy Story 5 in Week 2. I’m not remotely surprised given the reception I’d encountered, but I personally thought the thing that would be garnering the most discourse would be the weird CGI animals that were all over the film and the Disclosure Day trailer leading up to its release.
As it turns out, people are just real mad about the cell phones.
