Adam McKay's Don't Look Up is a comedic mirror to the world we live in, and it's easily the most grounded comedy McKay has made to date. A star-studded cast comes together to take a look at what happens when the truth is too tough to handle, even if it means the end of the world.
Don't Look Up follows two astronomers, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Phd candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), who discover a comet that will destroy Earth. However, on their mission to tell the world, the President, the media, and a tech giant try to deflect the truth and find a way to make this into something profitable.
Of course, this splits the country as to what they should do about the comet--with a giant chunk of them thinking they should do nothing or that the comet doesn't exist at all--even with substantial evidence stacked against them. It's cognitive dissonance at its finest, which is the driving force of the comedy within the film. How much is the public and those in charge willing to ignore when faced with their own demise? In McKay's film, they're willing to ignore almost all of it.
The butt of the joke isn't as much on the people falling for the misinformation though, it's primarily on those in charge, failing to do what scientists deem necessary in order to save the planet. The extraordinary lengths these people will go to in order to make sure they remain popular in the eyes of the public, even if that means completely misleading them. McKay's previous comedies like Talladega Nights and Step Brothers contain over-the-top humor where the dumbest of characters are the butt of the joke, and that continues here, but his comedic style has become more nuanced. It may not have the same quotability as McKay's previous works, but this is a more mature movie.
Don't Look Up's cast is huge, and there are plenty of familiar faces here, some of which only appear for one scene, like Chris Evans playing an actor starring in a movie about a comet destroying Earth. The few that pop up as cameos are usually there for a quick gag and work well, never really taking the attention fully off of the main cast. Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett are fantastic as morning talk show hosts who try to put a smile on every piece of news, no matter how sad. DiCaprio and Lawrence work exceptionally well as the two scientists, each on their own very different journeys–although both are constantly struggling with the frustration of lack of action on part of the government. Both characters go through interesting character arcs, neither of them feeling like one-note characters. And then there's Timothée Chalamet, who pops in later in the film in one of the funniest moments of the film. However, most of the laughs mainly revolve around the audience giggling at the fact Chalamet is playing such a weird character.
However, Meryl Streep as President Janie Orlean and Jonah Hill as her son Jason Orlean--who is also the Chief of Staff--steal the show. Streep's character is a narcissistic president who only cares about self-interest and how the media perceives her, while her son is a vapid, idiotic, entitled adult whose life experiences are the polar opposite of the average American. Both characters are the driving force of humor in the scenes they're in. They are the worst of humanity, and a nice balance for the story--which is about the world possibly ending.
One of the major issues of Don't Look Up is that the message of the film is pounded into the audience's brain over and over again: Misinformation spreads and those in power with all the money in the world don't have the average person's interests in mind, and we should trust experts. Maybe it's because we're all living in an era of misinformation, in the middle of a global pandemic, but about halfway through the movie, you'll be saying, "Yeah, we get it." This leads to a bit of frustration for the viewer, as you hope someone will come to their senses. You wait for the moment that the world decides to trust scientists, and you're quickly reminded that the movie isn't about to do that. One way to alleviate that frustration is to remind yourself of McKay's The Other Guys, which featured a plethora of characters just as dumb--if only these two movies took place in the same universe.
Don't Look Up has moments that hit exceptionally close to home in 2021, but they are moments we can at least laugh at together. Its all-star cast is just as over-the-top as the characters they play, in the best way possible, and while Don't Look Up isn't as quotable as McKay's previous work, it's still a home run as far as comedy goes. The message of the movie does get drilled into the viewer's brain over and over again, but that's the weakest part of this very strange film. Don't Look Up is in theaters now and arrives on Netflix on December 24.
