Don't Look Up (2021)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Adam McKay does it again with a surprise big-name, big-budget comedy right in the middle of awards season. I didn't like him before The Big Short, but that movie and Vice are two of my favorite topical comedies; perhaps they endear me to him because they both have cruel dark sides (actually, I'm not sure I personally consider Vice a comedy, but here we are). His biting satire in these feature films is finely tuned to be at once riveting, informative, absurd, and often bleak. So naturally, after tackling the housing crisis of 2007 and Dick Cheney's rise to power, he decided to tackle climate change. Seems doable, right?

Actually, in his hands, yes. Not because it's like the uncannily realistic analysis of history in his previous two films; some may argue this movie has more in common with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or even It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World than anything else. An enormous ensemble cast of A-listers assemble here to deliver a rollicking mess of comedy, a collage of vignettes meant to overwhelm our senses, assisted by breakneck editing that tosses in heavy amounts of seemingly random stock footage. McKay's screenplay, too, sometimes feels like an amalgamation of memes, sound bytes, and conspiracy headlines awash in wry clickbait humor. The film may be, generically, a political commentary on the climate change crisis, but in terms of scope, it is equally interested in social media, celebrity worship, technology and big business, political corruption, scientific sellout, and, yes, global warming. By its triumphant finale, it even reaches a level of existential contemplation on par with Samuel Beckett's work.

Leonardo DiCaprio leads as an unpretentious astronomy professor in Michigan whose PhD student (played by Jennifer Lawrence) discovers that a huge comet is flying directly toward Earth. Its size and movement indicate it will strike in approximately six months and cause an extinction event that could destroy all life on the planet. With their colleague (Rob Morgan), they quickly attempt to warn the White House of impending doom. But the president (Meryl Streep), a Trumpian woman who cares more about her appearance, re-election, and private life more than anything else, won't have it, and her son and Chief of Staff (Jonah Hill) tries to limit their access. To get the message out, they take to televised news, but the newscasters (Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) are more interested in lighthearted banter and viewing numbers than in news of disaster. 

In many ways a comedy of errors, the film's bleak attitude toward our cultural institutions of media, government, and celebrity would be tragically infuriating if not for the absurdist humor lacing each scene. Each new scandal or distraction is more enticing to the American public than bad news, specifically that of the death of our planet. It's telling that DiCaprio feels the need to go on shows like Sesame Street to scream "We're all going to die" when the news only makes fun of the crazy scientists. It doesn't take long for the scientists themselves, in moments like this, to become memes and sound bytes themselves, adding to the chaotic distraction that is social media. It's also telling that the frenetic editing of Don't Look Up increasingly leans into the annoyingly short attention spans cultivated by social media -- even cutting between scenes in the middle of characters' sentences -- implying that we (the audience) are as much a part of the problem as the ridiculous people we're watching. 

It has its odd moments, to be sure, and a couple really wacky inclusions. Mark Rylance pops in as a sort of senile cross between Elon Musk and Steve Jobs to try and save the world while making even more money. Timothée Chalamet shows up for a few scenes near the end, doing his usual grungy thing as a superficially precocious young adult, but he does help facilitate the surprisingly emotional climax of the film. And then there's the chillingly realistic shift in the final act, when the scientists finally attempt to harness all the tools of social media to their advantage by starting a new trend of #JustLookUp, before the president and other non-believers challenge it with the titular catchphrase, chanting "Don't Look Up" at rallies and branding their red hats with their new mantra. These only help make the texture of the film more fascinating politically even as we see the parallels with deniers of climate change. And while few moments have real depth to them -- often the film literally cuts away just as characters experience epiphanies or prepare to make meaningful declarations -- the scope here makes it all work. It might be a message movie, but it's got a lot of messages, like any quality SNL skit worth its time. And this one is far more than worth it.