OSCARS 2022: Don't Look Up (2021)

In a past, you've seen actors best known for comedy get Oscar attention by radically changing directions and pursuing drama. It's a technique at least as old as Red Buttons in “Sayonara.” While it's not always a guaranteed win, such a bold act is frequently rewarded with at least a nomination. In recent years, we've seen a similar phenomenon with comedy directors. Peter Farrelly did “Green Book,” Jay Roach did “Trumbo” and “Bombshell,” Todd Phillips did “Joker.” Of course, the quality of these films have been hotly debated and that's certainly true with Adam McKay's “serious” movies. Were “The Big Short” and “Vice” vital, satirical post-mortems of our troubled times or just painfully smarmy? The debate continues with McKay's latest, “Don't Look Up,” a star-studded parable about climate change that has earned some raves and plenty of scorn from people who found it unbearably smug. This clearly didn't bother the Academy too much, who nominated it in four categories including Best Picture. I guess it's my turn to weigh in.

Astronomy P.h.D. candidate Kate Dibiasky discovers a new comet in the night sky. The celebration is quickly cut short when her professor, Dr. Mindy, realizes the comet is on a direct collision course with Earth. The scientists rush to inform the government of this incoming extinction level event. President Orlean, her administration mired in scandals, is surprisingly apathetic about the comet and swear Mindy and Dibiasky to secrecy. The two instead attempt to alert the public through the media but the effects aren’t as expected. As it becomes increasingly clear that a comet strike is still imminent, big business interferes with the government’s attempts to save the world and misinformation and debate grips the public. Meanwhile, Mindy and Kate continue to do what they can to protect humanity. 

“Don’t Look Up” is a in-no-way subtle allegory about climate change. A giant comet rocketing towards Earth is a threat to all of society and our entire species. Yet the issue is immediately politicized. The government ignores it, searching for results that favor their partisan outlook, until it becomes politically advantageous to discuss it. Big business directly derails attempts to stop it, because they value making money more than human lives. The media doesn’t give the story its due diligence, focusing on celebrity gossip. Large swathes of the public refuse to believe the comet is even real, until the threat becomes visible to the naked eye. Of course, like all allegories, the reading starts to fall apart if you think about it too hard. Climate change has been going on for decades, the comet is a new threat. Climate change effects poorer social strata more, while the comet means the death of every human on Earth. But the point stands. “Don’t Look Up’s” target is obvious. Allegory really only works if it can convey new understanding to people. “Don’t Look Up” is so thuddingly obvious, that this seems unlikely to happen. 

Furthermore, the film’s satire is frequently muddled. The exact political party President Orlean belongs to is never stated. This is a real half-assed attempt at both-sides-ism as she’s obviously based on Trump. Nepotism runs wild in her cabinet, as her son is her chief of staff. Her administration is constantly rocked by tabloid-like sex scandals. Eventually, she holds populist rallies and reduces her position to an easily parroted catchphrase. The parallels to real-life big business figures is also confused. Mark Rylance plays a tech mogul who hopes to mine the comet for valuable minerals before destroying it. A billionaire businessman cluelessly meddling in galactic affairs is presumably inspired by Elon Musk. Yet Rylance’s character, a soft spoken and ambiguously neuro-divergent cellphone inventor with a barely-hidden cruel side and an affinity for turtleneck sweaters, is clearly based on Steve Jobs. What point is there to make about climate change by mixing these two very different figures together? It’s that kind of jumbled writing that ultimately makes “Don’t Look Up’s” satire barbless. This is, after all, a movie about how people are too preoccupied with celebrity culture to care about the end of the world that is itself filled with celebrities.

If you did a search through negative reviews of Adam McKay’s recent movies, the word “smug” would probably appear more than any other. “Don’t Look Up” is, admittedly, less obnoxiously self-congratulatory than “The Big Short” and “Vice.” It never breaks the fourth wall to directly call the audience stupid and explain the situation using simple words. There’s generally less of the self-satisfied gags and showy editing that made “Vice” so unbearable. (Though still enough to earn a nomination for Most Best Editing.) Yet the film is still talking down to the viewer in the shallow way it parodies celebrity culture and social media. Such as in a groan-worthy gag where Chris Evans appears to offer a completely useless bipartisan statement. Or the way many characters are portrayed as idiots glued to their cellphones. Yet, like all things that are smug, the film is also utterly convinced of its own self-importance. This is presumably why a farcical subplot about Arianna Grande and Kid Chudi, playing thinly veiled versions of themselves, stops for a way-too-long musical number that was desperate for a Best Song nomination. “Way-too-long” describes the whole movie, as the viewer’s patience definitely runs out before the two hours and twenty three minutes run time is over.

Satire is a tricky thing to do, as it has to be both pointed and funny. I’ve already described how “Don’t Look Up” is ineffective as social commentary. But is it at least funny? Sometimes. Running gags about the CIA pulling bags over people’s heads, or a general who charges for free snacks, made me laugh. Jennifer Lawrence, who seems more hit than miss in comedy, actually got most of the laughs as the perpetually annoyed Kate. Timothee Chalamet is also pretty amusing as the seemingly inebriated but utterly sincere teen she romances. Yet a lot of “Don't Look Up” is both too broad and too demoralizingly accurate. Meryl Streep’s President is a low-brow cartoon character. Jonah Hill as the president’s son, constantly throwing mean-spirited insults around, is painfully unfunny. Ron Perlman’s appearance as a racist old-school military hero seems unnecessary. The last six years have been so improbably surreal that an exaggerated satire like this can mostly just copy reality, which depresses me more than it makes me laugh. 

Ultimately, the element I found most compelling about “Don't Look Up” seems to be the subplot many have deemed least essential. When introduced, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Professor Mindy is an overly scientific astrophysicist and an utterly mundane family man. Initially terrified to go in-front of the cameras, Mindy proves surprisingly popular with the public. He’s swept up in this newfound fame, arguing with trolls on Twitter, appearing on “Sesame Street,” and beginning a strictly superficial affair with Cate Blanchette’s newscaster. He even becomes the face of a for-profit public campaign to calm people. (The phone number for which, in one of the film’s best and driest gags, leads to a real life phone sex line.) By the time he’s working with the obviously corrupt administration, to help the cellphone company mine the comet, it looks like he’s loosing his soul. Mindy eventually has a moment of clarity, cathartically screaming at the globe on television, and re-centering himself. This makes the film’s final moments, when the protagonists gather around friends and family in a world utterly in crisis, kind of touching. Leo is good too. It’s nice that he can still play an everyman, even at his level of stardom. 

If “Don’t Look Up” wakes people up to the realities of climate change, I guess that’ll make it worth it. The film was apparently a huge hit for Netflix, so I guess it’s connecting with a large audience. Yet I can’t say it worked for me. Weighed down by the lofty position of its own pompousness, the film lacks insight as satire. Though some gags work, its black humor is all over the place. The cast is a seriously mixed bag. I didn’t totally hate it. But, frankly, I’d rather spend two-and-a-half hours being close to my loved ones, in defiance of our own world-ending apocalypses, than watch this again. [5/10]