It is good to see Leonardo Di Caprio let go. After years of award bait films and performances, stories of eating raw bison meat and all the effort showing on parts of his face and body, it is indeed a pleasure to see him in a film that takes the world seriously but itself, not so much. Now if we could see Di Caprio in a couple of romantic comedies, a Christmas film (Don’t Look Up is one, perhaps?) with cheery, merry faces and people, we can celebrate him again without matching his struggle or empathising with it. Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up is a disaster film that is all too real. There are no aliens but something else from outer space—a comet that is hurtling towards the earth for complete annihilation.
We’ve seen Roland Emmerich come up with doomsday films like Independence Day and 2012. In the former America saves the world from aliens and the latter cashes in on debatable eschatological beliefs. In Don’t Look Up, McKay satirizes the theme of those films—America always saves the world and no matter what it needs a face, a hero to do it—Ron Pearlman doing a buff Steve Rogers here.
The film is also built on the post-Trump, right wind dominated world that thrives on misinformation. Its jokes and situations seem forced and tired after years of talk show hosts and columnists writing for the same, not so mystifying conditions, which is why Don’t Look Up plays like an extended Saturday Night Live sketch.
Morning show hosts in their brightly lit studios and gaudy sets, an Oval Office run by an authoritarian President Janie Orlean (a less than impressive Meryl Streep) and her son Jason (Jonah Hill), also her Chief of Staff.
It’s clear Don’t Look Up wants to shed light on climate change and a planetary disaster that’s closer than we think, and the collective responsibility in this regard. Its jokes riff on conspiracy theorists, apathetic world leaders who are reduced to cartoonish characters to service the script and a populace that is so inured to surveillance capitalism that it will believe anything. We even get a Steve Jobs like figure in Mark Rylance, a billionaire tech giant who would like to cash in on the natural resources that the comet could offer if it hit earth. Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is a Snowden like figure who speaks truth and science to power and is declared public enemy no.1. Dr. Randall Mindy (Di Caprio), her professor and fellow astronomer is less enthusiastic because the impending doom leads to anxiety and panic attacks, mental health issues he was already dealing with. Dr. Mindy becomes the stand-in for the citizens of the world, giving a more appropriate response as someone who believes in science and a willingness to live while Kate is the character world leaders would do well to listen to.
McKay’s now familiar zaniness is visible throughout, it’s not even fresh anymore.
Jump cuts and parkour editing all around, the film captures the ticking time bomb anxiety that we must all feel. But it is too invested in the satirizing of social media, memes and politicians for its own good. The Big Short worked because it reduced a complex subject to its basics and delivered comedy without jettisoning the darkness associated with the events. It also arrived after the fact. There are a couple of sequences here—like when the film takes pot-shots at liberals too (but not enough) and zeroing in on the distractive news cycle through a dinner table conversation about store bought pie vs homemade pie. But mostly Don’t Look Up goes for the easy jabs and exaggerated costume dramedy that late night talk shows and, to be honest, real news do better. As we embark on 2022, reality beats satire on an everyday basis. Don’t Look Up wants us to look at the bleak future but we are already living in a bleaker present.
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