The result is an unfortunately too long and too on-the-nose film that tries to extract laughs out of an audience while reminding them, over-and-over, that they live in hell.
When PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) finds that a 9-kilometer-wide comet’s trajectory puts it squarely on a collision course with Earth, her mentor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) checks her work. He confirms the news and immediately informs NASA. But almost immediately, a political shell game begins. A long-delayed meeting with President Orlean (Meryl Streep) goes sideways as the news doesn’t benefit her election polling. The President, however, deems the discovery of the comet classified but takes a wait-and-see approach to the situation.
So, Dr. Mindy and Dibiasky, along with Dr. Oglethorpe (a sadly under-used Rob Morgan,) mount a media campaign in an attempt to alert the public of the forthcoming extinction-level event. What they find is that the public-at-large — particularly in the United States — is less interested in Comet Dibiasky than they are about the breakup of two popular musicians (Ariana Grande and Scott Mescudi.)
Unfortunately, that’s the main comedic aspect of Don’t Look Up. After the scenario becomes clear, variations of the same jokes get recycled for another two hours. Despite the occasional inspired moment, most of the attempted comedy falls flat, misses, or is hamstrung by the film’s chaotic editing. Where the film more reliably finds its strongest humor are mostly throwaway sight-gags that require a lack of attention to the foreground action. That’s hardly a compliment.
While the movie’s stellar cast list (Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, Himesh Patel, Tyler Perry, and Cate Blanchett) sounds appealing, nearly all involved are underutilized or, more often, completely unlikeable. Sometimes both. In fact, that’s the biggest problem with this film. It holds up a mirror to society and, instead of warping the reflection so we can laugh at it, it simply reveals us as we are. We don’t want to laugh because it’s scarier and sadder than it is funny.
Don’t Look Up combines elements of Idiocracy, Dr. Strangelove, social media, politics, talk-shows, and the 24-hour news cycle and puts them all in a blender. The result is an unfortunately too long and too on-the-nose film that tries to extract laughs out of an audience while reminding them, over-and-over, that they live in hell. Perhaps it’s fitting that it’s the final movie I review for 2021.
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
