Movie Review: Don't Look Up (2021)

Don't Look Up (2021) written and directed by Adam McKay

Two astronomers, one a teacher (Leonardo DiCaprio) and one his grad student (Jennifer Lawrence), discover a comet that will hit the Earth is six months and fourteen days. After getting extremely stressed out, they take the information to the White House. They have to wait for over a day since the president (Meryl Streep) is dealing with other important issues. She's trying to get a Supreme Court nominee through the Senate even though the nominee is plagued by scandal after scandal (the most innocent being he was a nude model). Also, she needs to lead her party through mid-term elections. When they finally meet, she does not take it seriously nor does her chief advisor (who is also her son (Jonah Hill)). The astronomers go to the press to get the word out. The grad student's boyfriend works at a prestigious New York paper. Before the article comes out, the astronomers are booked on a popular morning talk show where the presenters always try to be upbeat. The teacher can barely talk on television and his student is angry and upset, making her a poor fit for the talk show or convincing the viewers of the gravity of the predicament. Their appearance goes badly and the story spirals out of control as various people try to capitalize on the situation, including a cell-phone company entrepreneur (Mark Rylance) who is part Steve Jobs and part Andy Warhol. 

The satire in the movie works well. They make fun of all sorts of extreme attitudes: the self-defeating anger of liberals, the self-promoting piety of conservatives, the self-unaware pseudo-profundity of creative corporate executives, and the self-centered vacuity of television presenters. The plot meanders a bit and the movie could use some trimming of its two hour, eighteen minute run time. DiCaprio's character goes through an unlikely narrative arc that seems more to serve the plot (and the jokes). Lawrence fares better as the semi-unlikeable Greta Thunberg character. The movie delivers on the comedy in fine fashion, skewering a good variety of people.

Recommended.

As I write (January 2022), this is only available streaming on Netflix.