‘Don’t Look Up’ is Quite Bad; Toothless Satire

I don’t recall writing anything about Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” so here goes.

The film is a mix of dumb comedy and social-conscious drama. Does it work? Most of the time, it doesn’t. In fact, I was rather annoyed by quite a few of the characters in the film, not to mention McKay’s snarky writing. However, the cast alone will make this a very popular movie on Netflix.

The gist of the plot has Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) discovering a comet headed on a direct collision to earth. The problem? No one really seems to care. Not even a media tour or a meet-up with an indifferent President (Meryl Streep) and her son/Chief of Staff results in action.

The comet is going to make impact in six months, but the 24-hour news cycle and a social media-obsessed public are just interested in the next big celeb story. Know what? There is absolutely no way that scientists would be ignored the way that they are in the film, with the very clear data showing that a comet is headed towards earth. And where are the rest of the world’s scientists in this film? It’s not like the comet is just hitting the U.S — why are other countries not sounding the alarm as well?

It’s such an over-the-top and nonsensical experience. It’s McKay’s usual frenetic ADD multiplied to the nth degree. Leonardo DiCaprio as the Faucian scientist and Mark Rylance as a Steve Jobs-type are the highlights of this otherwise messy and brutally unsubtle jab at ignorant politicians. Jennifer Lawrence just stares worryingly for most of the film.

Someone needs to tell McKay to tone it down a notch. His camera is overtly excited in every frame, and there’s no room for nuance or subtlety anywhere in this film. And, why must it be 156 minutes?

You don’t believe anything that happens in this film. The moments are rendered in rather cartoonish fashion; for a film invested in tackling the zeitgeist, I don’t think it quite gets how people act in times of crisis.

Every character in this thing is just not believable. There’s a lot of improv, tons of special effects, but it’s all rendered via a delivery that recalls SNL skits. Some of these skits work, but most don’t.

The fact that this was named one of the ten best movies of the year by both NBR and AFI just tells you how bad of a movie year we’ve had.