Justin Paul Lee

So, “Thank You, Dr. Fauci” (2024) isn’t your average pandemic movie—it’s way more than masks and hand sanitizer. Justin Paul Lee dives headfirst into the chaos that was, well, pretty much 2020 and beyond. The story floats between tense kitchen-table debates, those endless doom-scrolls through social media, and the weird mix of hope and suspicion you felt every time someone said “flatten the curve.” Characters aren’t just cardboard cutouts saying science-y stuff; they’re confused, angry, vulnerable, and sometimes hilarious in the face of all the mayhem. You get a front-row seat to the impact Dr. Fauci had, not just in the press briefings but in regular people’s lives—families arguing over Thanksgiving, old friends butting heads on Zoom, awkward first dates with masks on. There’s a real sense of fatigue, hope, and stubbornness that just feels genuine. The script doesn’t shy away from the wild conspiracy theories floating around, either—it actually lets people air out their weirdest thoughts and tries to figure out why we all got so divided in the first place. At its heart, the film’s about resilience—how folks kept it together (or didn’t) while the world spun off its axis. There are no easy answers here, but by the end, you can’t help but feel like you’ve lived through it again, messiness and all. It’s not about hero worship; it’s about the messiness of being human when everything goes sideways.