Don’t Look Up
I wasn’t expecting there to be multiple movies that feel like lengthy Saturday Night Live skits this year.
Don’t Look Up feels like it was written by Twitter-crazed political junkies who forget to go outside and touch the grass. It strangely feels like it should have come out 10 years prior because of how out of touch it is. Director, writer, and producer Adam Mckay usually hit the nail on the head with progressive explanations on major American events like the 2008 housing crisis and the rise of war criminal Dick Cheney, but his recent climate-change-centered film misses the mark.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays a man capable of having a wife his own age and three adult sons opposite Jennifer Lawrence’s comet discovering grad student. The two scientists work to inform the public of this life-ending discovery but are met with laughter.
With a star-studded cast from Chalamet to Cudi, some of the characters fall flat due to a lack of development. It seems they are only there to add a name to the poster without having an actual purpose of being in the film.
This is a satire so of course, the onscreen characters are meant to represent real-life people. In Hollywood’s weird obsession with the political right, the left-leaning actors go full force in portraying their opponents. Streep’s girl boss president is a mix of Trump’s Denial and Clinton’s white feminism. Mark Rylance’s tech billionaire is explicitly modeled after the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Although it is an allegory on climate change (but does nothing to actually talk about the environment) it decides to put a lot of its focus on social media and misinformation. It is more interested in portraying social media trolls than finding a way to pursue its opposers to take a second to think about the changing environment around them.
Climate Change has been a longstanding issue that non-white populations have been speaking about for decades while this film is about a comet they just discovered that is suddenly going to wipe out humanity. Climate Change is also going to have gradual effects instead of mass extinction. I understand the meaning of the comet but its sudden existence and ending make no sense in how it relates to climate change. Maybe in the sense that a lot of people just now discovered it is an issue.
Instead of putting money into this film, they should’ve put it towards the issue they are “trying” to educate the public on. It is also a very myopic, western view that left me wondering: why aren’t any of the other countries trying to do something to stop it? It is very America First and America Only vibes.
It is very focused on showcasing the stupidity of the people it expects to buy tickets and watch. Consumers are getting smarter and are being generalized by the elite class. This seems like something the Facebook politics audience would be more intuned to.
Disaster film is a fitting title because this film was a disaster.