Don’t Look Up is the latest satirical comedy by director Adam McKay (The Big Short, Vice). It has garnered polarized reactions from critics and audiences. The former has accused the film of having little important to say other and being mostly unfunny. While those points are not without merit, Don’t Look Up isn’t necessarily terrible. There are worse things you could watch to cap off 2021, whose only claim to fame is that it’s not as bad as 2020.
PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers a comet that, according to professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), is supposed to crash into Earth in six months. When they relay this news to the US government, they are told to stay quiet and do nothing. As they try to spread the news and, later, try to make sure the US government does its best to combat the threat, they begin to lose their minds at the banality and ignorance of people in general, who begin to question whether the comet is real or not.
Don’t Look Up doesn’t shy away from hitting its audience on the head with its point. People have debated whether the movie is doing a send-up of climate change or COVID (it could be both), but there are more clearer parodies in the story, such as a President (Meryl Streep) who appointed her own son (Jonah Hill) as her chief of staff and is facing controversy for a Supreme Court pick. With DiCaprio’s Dr. Mindy, people might find an uncomfortable parallel with Dr. Fauci, for better or for worse.
Unsurprisingly, DiCaprio and Lawrence’s characters get the most development.
With Dr. Mindy, it’s about how he gets swept up by all the attention and a whirlwind affair with the gorgeous daytime show host, Brie (Cate Blanchett). Kate, meanwhile, is mostly exasperated by the government’s ineptness and also strangely obsessed with the three-star general who falsely charged her for snacks at the White House.
Still, the supporting cast doesn’t always get their chance to make their mark, but they make do with what they have. Timothée Chalamet makes a late entrance for a small but important role that emphasizes why humanity is worth fighting for. Ariana Grande appears as a pop-star whose relationship updates take precedence over the news of the comet’s existence. She later sings a well-written song about stopping the comet a few days before it hits the Earth. Mark Rylance plays a grating tech billionaire who disrupts the government’s efforts to destroy the comet for his own opportunistic grab at lucrative minerals found inside the comet.
Don’t Look Up isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but perhaps it takes the most effective route to make its point, considering the current landscape of media and politics.
It’s timely, but that might date it in the long run. Would the film have worked as a theatrical release? That’s hard to say. At least on Netflix, it will get a fair amount of eyeballs and then settle into obscurity for the rest of its shelf life. It’s better than most of the Netflix movies released this year, so it at least has that going for it.