I watched Adam McKay’s latest film when it debuted on Netflix on Christmas Eve (2021) but, for some reason, I just banked it and didn’t get around to it until now. If you haven’t taken the leap yet, Don’t Look Up is a sharply-penned, often hilarious satire that’s wild, well-acted, and uncomfortably effective.
When two academic astronomers discover an extinction-level comet barreling towards earth they try to warn the President of the United States, but it’s blown off as a hoax. With the utter incompetence of the government on full display and the two unassuming scientists are forced to take their fight to the media which doesn’t go exactly as planned either.
If that sounds familiar, you can plug in Covid or climate change as synonyms for the comet in this story and it still works. Writer/Director Adam McKay has always demonstrated a smart sense of humor and an ability to wield sarcasm with great effectiveness. He has also taken on big political stories like the housing crisis (The Big Short) and Dick Cheney’s tenure as Vice President under George W. Bush (Vice), so this isn’t exactly foreign territory for him, but it does feel different than those other films.
Films like Vice and The Big Short were based on events that already happened and told in a way that was designed to be, at least partially, educational for moviegoers who were unfamiliar with the subject(s). The Oscar-winning screenwriter kept his sense of humor in telling those stories and the scripts were sharp, witty, and informative. That ultimately made the subject matter more digestible for a wider audience and made the movies more successful. At first, I couldn’t quite tell what this new movie was trying to be. The humor is still there in Don’t Look Up but it’s wielded with a heavier hand and is much more over the top…more in line with a toned-down Idiocracy (which I love). Even though a hypothetical scenario acts as the catalyst, it’s not too difficult to see the real-life parallels McKay and David Sirota are drawing. As a result, it’s more pointed than those other films I mentioned.
The cast is amazing, of course, as we have come to expect from these McKay ensembles in recent years and he wrote the characters near the margins which makes for some very entertaining performances.
Leonardo DiCaprio obviously gets top billing playing Dr. Randall Mindy, who is one of the scientists that discover the comet, and it’s a lot of fun watching him play an anxiety-ridden nervous mess. At the end of the day, the role is still very much Leo and it works. Jennifer Lawrence is the other student-scientist who first discovers the comet and names it, Kate Dibiasky. She gets to have fun with the role as well, but the protagonists are a little closer to the center of the spectrum here and not much of a stretch for either performer.
The best roles belong to Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, and Mark Rylance. Streep plays President Orlean who is a female caricature of Donald Trump that’s not that far-fetched. She plays it with this dismissive swagger that hits the nail on the head. Jonah Hill plays her son and chief of staff, obviously a play on Don Jr., and you can see he’s having so much fun playing it. Watching the two of them politic the situation is both hilarious and sad. Rylance might have the best performance in the film as the amalgam of Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. He plays the role with an almost inhuman quality that’s very creepy but still funny. All three of them are almost cartoonish but dialed down enough to be in the ballpark of reality which makes it extra eerie.
There were a number of other entertaining performances throughout the star-studded cast, including Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry as a pair of news anchors that are more interested in ratings and optics than news. You’ve got Rob Morgan as the senior scientist who is trying his best to help get a plan in place. Timothée Chalamet, because he’s in everything, has a small role as a wannabe anarchist while Ron Pearlman plays a decorated but insane war hero. And then there are the strange cameos from Ariana Grande and Kid Kudi as a gaudy celebrity couple who somehow become involved in trying to promote knowledge about the comet. It’s all very strange but it works.
Through the first hour or so, I wasn’t sure how to feel while I watching it. It’s easy to see that the filmmaking quality is good and the script is solid, but it was tough to detect the level of seriousness. Once I got in sync with the rhythm of the humor I really enjoyed it and it has continued to grow on me ever since.
Don’t Look Up was one of the more enjoyable films of 2021 but because it’s political in nature, it has been polarizing. I can understand it’s going to rub some people the wrong way but McKay is critical of both the media and the government and is really urging people to meet in the middle.
Recommendation: See it for the performances, the script, and the outlandish nature of the story that hits a little too close to home.
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