Don’t Look Up (2021)
3/4
One of the most memorable new movies that I’ve seen recently is Adam McKay’s new political satire Don’t Look Up. This well-cast and mean-spirited smash has broke streaming records across the globe and is 2022’s most talked-about film so far.
The main attribute that really makes this movie work is its cast. Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence deliver pitch-perfect performances that play to their strengths perfectly. Meryl Streep is very funny as Janie Orlean, the first female American president, and Jonah Hill matches Streep’s performance with one equally as humorous as the president’s son and chief of staff Jason Orlean. Every one of the remaining cast performances were great too, but these four performances are the standouts.
McKay’s direction is also a big highlight of the movie. As he has shown with 2015’s The Big Short, he has no problem tackling dark scenarios—in this case, a planet-destroying comet approaching Earth and the astronomers trying to warn people about it—and actually turning them into funny movies that people connect to.
I also must say that Nicholas Britell’s score is one of the best comedy scores I’ve heard in a long time, and Linus Sandgren’s cinematography makes the movie look like a work of art.
The thing I truly disliked about Don’t Look Up is that there are times when the film is trying to say something important but it’s undercut by misused humour.
While some of the jokes are funny, the absurdity of the situations take away from the often-serious intentions behind the jokes and certainly detracts from the movie’s larger points.
Another thing that I found off-putting about the movie is, although it’s well-intentioned, its tone can feel a little bit preachy and mean-spirited, especially for a comedy.
Regardless of its off-putting tone, Don’t Look Up at least presents its audience with an intriguing satire that pokes fun at our leaders’ current politics-over-science approach while delivering a decent movie that viewers, at the very least, will talk about long after they leave the comfort of their couches.