'Don't Look Up' Review
R: Language throughout, some sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug content
Runtime: 2 Hrs and 19 Minutes
Production Companies: Hyperobject Industries
Distributor: Netflix
Director: Adam McKay
Writer: Adam McKay
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep
Release Date: December 24, 2021
In Theaters and Netflix
Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem — it’s on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a planet-killer the size of Mount Everest is an inconvenient fact to navigate. With the help of Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). With only six months until the comet makes its impact, managing the 24-hour news cycle and gaining the attention of the social media-obsessed public before it’s too late proves shockingly comical. What will it take to get the world to just look up?
Within the past several years, writer/director Adam McKay has transitioned from a comedic director of beloved Will Ferrell comedies to a highly esteemed, politically charged filmmaker. As much as the industry has grown to adore this new McKay, my Anchorman-loving ass has longed for old McKay. Enough of these political movies like Vice and The Big Short. I miss the dude who made silly romps with comedic actors that were nothing but a good time. Don’t Look Up, thankfully, is a weird middle ground where the old and new McKay clash… for better or worse.
McKay’s screenplay success lies within the leads, Kate Dibiasky and Dr. Randall Mindy, legitimate characters who are likable and fleshed-out people with arcs. As the two discover an asteroid hurling its way towards Earth, they have to navigate the stupidity of American society and their mishandling of the situation in real-time. The two are from the midwest and they are written to have small-town attitudes; Kate is a blunt millennial and Mindy is a basic everyday man. They both have great individual arcs, primarily Mindy, who swiftly becomes a public figure. He has to navigate the price of fame, especially when Kate, the person who discovered the asteroid, gets completely sidelined. As you watch the two astronomers take the entire country’s shit, you feel the weight of their frustration turn to rage. Also, that natural build of tension is complemented by the bustling jazz score provided by Nicholas Britell. The more accurate it gets on how poor the recent administration was and how the society was, the more you most likely dissociate due to the nail-biting anxiety of it all.
DiCaprio and Lawrence are unsurprisingly fantastic in their roles and have amazing comedic chemistry, especially since they aren’t comedic actors. Jennifer Lawrence goes full Katniss mode, for once again she portrays a woman who has had it up to here with a president’s bullshit. DiCaprio seamlessly got the notion of an average joe attitude with anxiety that builds to a super cathartic meltdown. Honestly, given how fleshed out Mindy’s arc is, it felt reminiscent of the arcs in old Will Ferrell comedies. I know he and McKay aren’t on the best terms at the moment, but Don’t Look Up felt like a Ferrell movie with a DiCaprio coat over it.
The film’s humor is decent overall, but when the jokes land, they have a heavy impact. McKay finally lets his comedic side glow and it evokes the playful, silly nature of the early days of his career. The movie is full to the brim with absurdist humor that eerily nails the realities that we have faced in recent memory regarding the pandemic. The A-list cast is fantastic with their line deliveries and the recurring gags are damn funny. Even the most detestable characters, such as Meryl Streep as the gender-reversed Donald Trump-like President, Janie Orlean, and her Eric-like son, Jason, managed to get a ton of laughs out of me. From a comedic standpoint, we got our Adam back. If only the filmmaking style of new Adam wasn’t so far up his ass.
Something that has turned me off of McKay’s recent films is the observational style of cinematography he offers. From a filmmaking standpoint, this is no different from the likes of Vice and The Big Short where it’s short on wide shots but stuffed with so many distracting inserts. The personalization of the cinematography makes you feel like you’re in the passenger seat on this anxiety-inducing rollercoaster ride, but the editing is choppy with too many unnecessary insert shots that pad out the run time and detract from the energy of the scenes. Due to this being more of a straightforward comedy than his previous films, the style is a factor to the humor that at times is either cheap visual gags or cutaways. There are moments where random characters are addressed in a large room who you didn’t even see before due to the shot composition being closeups or inserts. On top of that, there are needless cutaways to stock footage of people across the globe reacting to the news and while it works for comedic effect at first, it eventually becomes an overbearing nuisance, especially towards the end when you just want the damn thing to wrap up.
McKay’s screenplay accurately nails the stubbornness and ignorance of America in both the media and political spectrum, but that novelty wears off so swiftly. The satirical aspect of it is so damn on-the-nose in such a smug manner, acting like it's being deep when at best it’s only 3 feet into the pool. It’s just like how the Hulu Animaniacs reboot was overly reliant on making Trump jokes that were already worn out due to the entire world of comedy being focused on him. An ample amount of jokes fall flat because they take familiar jabs at an administration we’d like to forget since some of the elements in the film became our reality. There’s no damn reason for this film to be over two hours long and the way the film flows with its endless inserts and cutaways of stock footage is proof of this. I saw so many people try to compare this to a modern-day Dr. Strangelove… which was only an hour and a half long. Kubrick got in, made his points, served cunt, and got out! ONCE AGAIN! No comedy feature should be more than two hours long. Judd Apatow started that shit and I need somebody to put an end to it. Adam McKay, you are better than this! God!
With an A-list cast in tow, Don’t Look Up blends Adam McKay’s classic absurdism from his old days and smug satirical attempts from his recent political-centric mode to deliver the most middle-ground McKay movie to date, for better or worse.
