Don't Look Up
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
I had major reservations about where Adam McKay could go after The Big Short, mainly because I found Vice so perplexingly mediocre (in one of my first reviews for Films Fatale). What I can say, however, is that the director that was once associated with stupid (yet hilarious) comedies (Anchorman, Step Brothers, et cetera) is now forever trying. You can claim he tries too hard, given the scattershot nature of Vice, but I’d rather that than a filmmaker who doesn’t show any effort at all. Vice has so many different tastes tossed into one bowl, and it is a bit of an odd-tasting meal, even though each individual ingredient stands out rather nicely. When Don’t Look Up was announced, it was clear as day that it was an ambitious project, given its insanely stacked cast, two-and-a-half-hour runtime, and doomsday premise (a comet the size of Mt. Everest is heading towards Earth, and no one’s priorities, sans a few scientists’, are in the right place). I was wondering if this would continue the brilliance of The Big Short (which only gets better with time), or if it would be a coincidental misfire like Vice (get it? Dick Cheney?).
Well, Don’t Look Up is kind of in the middle. Given the harsh early reviews that the film has received, I was anticipating much more of a turkey for the Christmas cinema season. However, I hate to be otherwise, but I honestly don’t think that Don’t Look Up is that bad. Hell, it was actually pretty good. Again, I can appreciate a film with a lot of effort put into it much more than a pedestrian film that gets by on the bare minimum. I think the one asset that may bother people the most is that Don’t Look Up preaches to the choir. The people who will watch this film — likely left-wingers (outside of the conservatives who want to spite watch something, which I’ve seen before [and, like, why?]) — already feel this way about the current ways that crises are poorly dealt with in the world. Those who don’t agree will likely avoid this film at all costs, so I’d argue the majority of people watching Don’t Look Up won’t be challenged but rather empathized instead. That’s kind of a letdown when it comes to making a satire, but it hardly makes the film bad. There’s a certain relief in seeing the central characters (played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Rob Morgan) reacting to how insane everyone else around them is. Again, it’s an internal dialogue we’ve all had at some point or another, but it’s still refreshing to see it on screen. It’s not quite as validating as Network was (and is), but we also don’t have to compare every satire with the greatest case ever made.
Don’t Look Up is stuffed with ideas and commentary, to the point that all of its flaws can quickly be moved on from.
Like Vice, Don’t Look Up is full of ideas that either work or don’t (although the worst it gets here is that casting Meryl Streep as the president of the United States is so on-the-nose in its a-ha! middle finger to republicans that it warrants a bit of an eye-roll. Also I am not a conservative, in case anyone wants to insist that I am). However, Don’t Look Up is much more evenly directed; at least it has one focal point about the stupidities of the human experience and it sticks with it. If there is one saving grace that turns this preachy film into something a bit more, it would be the hyperactive editing that has aided McKay on his last few projects. The fast-paced cuts to new information provides interesting insight every single time, so there is an abundance of commentary here (yes, even amidst the beating of dead horses and pure obviousness).
Like his last few works, Don’t Look Up is clearly another McKay filmic essay on current day politics and the idiocies of civilization (the only animal networks where lives matter less than anything else; in our cases, we matter less than money, materials, popularity, credit ratings, and more). It’s an essay that maybe tries to detail too much at once, but it’s one that I still think has a lot of interesting juxtapositions — told entirely by enraged filmmaking techniques. It’s far from perfect, and it’s still far from the successor to The Big Short that I keep dreaming of, but Adam McKay is clearly sticking with his interesting style, and I don’t think that’s something to be angry about. I won’t say you must watch Don’t Look Up, but I really don’t think it’s as bad as the masses have been saying (although if you are not of the intended audience, don’t look up Don’t Look Up).
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.