When Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi hit theaters in 2017, it ignited an internet shitstorm that’s still bubbling to this day. There was no middle ground and you had to choose between unwavering love and seething hatred for the story, Ryan Johnson, the cast, Lucasfilm, and everyone who had a different opinion from yours. With a giant franchise like Star Wars, it’s not that shocking that fans would be passionate and frequently voice those passions on social media. They’d waited for years for this movie and it was either exactly what they wanted or a perceived slap in the face, so they were obviously going to take to Twitter about it.
Now we find ourselves in the waining days of 2021 and a star-studded Netflix comedy seems to have pumped new oxygen into the dumpster fire of movie discourse on social media. That film, of course, is Adam McKay’s new satire, Don’t Look Up.
The formula is pretty simple: take one part Idiocracy, one part Armageddon, sprinkle in some Deep Impact, add a tinge of Dr. Strangelove and give the ending a flavor that will linger for a little while and you’ve got the basic vibe of this story about a comet headed toward earth and the scientists trying to get people to care about it.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are Dr. Randall Mindy and Ph.D. candidate Kate Dibiasky, two Michigan State astronomers who make the doomsday discovery. Together with Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), they take the shocking news to the White House where President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her son/Chief of Staff Jason (Jonah Hill) are unfazed by the discovery. From there, the scientists struggle to emphasize just how catastrophic the comet’s impact will be on a popular morning show hosted by Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry) and Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) in a culture that is more obsessed with the relationship between two pop stars (Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi) than an extinction-level event.
Obviously, the comet is a metaphor for climate change and COVID-19, and it’s presented with all the subtlety of a sledge hammer, but that doesn’t always detract from the story being told. In fact, that makes the whole thing so much more cynical, which was right up my alley.
DiCaprio has recently unlocked a whole new performance category of nervous, anxious dudes that gives us a nice departure from his usual intensity. We got glimpses of it in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but here, he’s a nerdy, regular, Michigan dad who gets swept into media training, TV appearances, an affair, and facing the undeniable fact that the world is about to end. I never knew “Leo looking like a suburban dad and talking about astronomy” was something I was into, but when it’s right, it’s right…and it was right.
The cast is absolutely packed with talent including Mark Rylance, Ron Pearlman, Melanie Lynskey, Himesh Patel, and so many more, some with mere minutes of screen time.Streep always stands out and her President Orlean is reminiscent of Selena Meyer from Veep. Hill is terrific at playing an arrogant asshole, as we saw in This is the End, and he really leans into it here in a way that’s super entertaining. Blanchett and Perry completely nail the mindless news desk banter between anchors, and Timothée Chalamet delivers his lines so perfectly that I had to pause it because I was laughing so hard.
While I wouldn’t call it bloated by any means, there are times when the story can take little detours away from the strongest storylines and it can sometimes make us want to get back on track. An early scene introducing eccentric billionaire CEO Peter Irshwell (Rylance) drags a bit, as does a scene with Grande’s pop star talking about her breakup. These indulgences could be a result of a streaming release, where runtime is less of a concern and McKay and Co. wouldn’t have to worry about chopping their nearly two-and-a-half hour film into a more comedy-friendly 90 minutes.
In fact, the long runtime and star-studded cast ties in with some of the vitriol being spouted by people on social about this film. Comedies usually aren’t this long, so the runtime signals that this should be a prestige drama for some people. Comedies usually don’t have this many Oscar winners cracking jokes, so that also throws people off. The subject matter seems so grim, especially after the past two years, so surely this isn’t really a comedy, right? It is, but it’s also a pretty horrifying look at reality. Audiences don’t always know what to do with a movie like that, especially when we’ve just come off of the straightforward superhero blockbuster Spiderman: No Way Home.
So Don’t Look Up is a weird little treasure of a movie that polarizes audiences in a way we haven’t seen for a while. If this brand of cynical satire clicks with you, you’re going to love it. If the whole concept puts you off, maybe just skip the movie instead of ranting on social media about it. While I know that’s not going to happen, at least I’m happy people seem to be arguing about real things like climate change instead of lightsabers and Jedi islands like they were the last time the internet was this fired up.
