Film Review: “Don’t Look Up” — A Pitch-Dark Satire that Dares to be Impudently Pessimistic

By Daniel Gewertz

The knee-jerk, hateful reviews of Don’t Look Up possess comments so outsized, and so beside the point, that they bear a resemblance to the oblivious thinking of the movie’s anti-science ostriches.

Don’t Look Up, directed by Adam McKay. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett. On Netflix

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Don’t Look Up.

Don’t Look Up is a clever, unapologetically brash satire about a future America so consumed with celebrity worship, brain-numbing infotainment, social media popularity, and political gamesmanship that it refuses to take the impending destruction of planet Earth seriously. We’re not talking climate change here, though the parallel is obvious. Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) has irrefutable evidence that an unprecedentedly gigantic comet will wipe out Earth in precisely six months, 14 days. The chances of “planet extinction” are set at 99.78%.

“Call it 70% and let’s just move on,” says President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep), who’s more bothered by the upcoming midterms and the unearthing of nude pics of her sexy boyfriend, a Supreme Court nominee.

Are you an unabashed pessimist about 21st-century America? Do you believe that we’ve reached a point that — to quote W.B. Yeats — “the center cannot hold”? And, most of all, are you in the apparent minority who understands that true satire is a purposeful exaggeration of reality? If so, I say just give this liberating, appropriately cynical, fitfully hilarious film a look.

Despite an abundance of cinematic virtues, Don’t Look Up has been met with more negative reviews than raves, and a Rotten Tomatoes rating of just 55%. Critics from all political segments of the mainstream media have joined the surprisingly ferocious attack on this expertly made comedy. The Wall Street Journal and Britain’s Guardian exhibited outright loathing; The Guardian‘s Charles Bramesco went so far as to complain that the movie might “drive away any [anti-science] partisans who still need to be won over,” as if the film were some sadly tone-deaf BBC News Hour segment.

The newspapers and websites most joined at the hip to the movie industry — from Variety to the Hollywood Reporter — were so venomous, it’s as if they believe this film is a danger to the American dynasty and their own jobs. The word smug crops up in nearly every pan. Is it a mere matter of blaming the messenger? And yet, this movie is hardest on political elites, tech billionaires, and mass and social media — not your average American. Perhaps the underlying belief is that rich movie actors have no right to rock their gravy boat.

The National Board of Review, meanwhile, named Don’t Look Up one of the top movies of 2021. The Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Movie Awards gave it best picture nominations.

To put it in terms of cinematic style: The critics cannot appreciate a star-laden, pitch-dark satire that dares to be impudently pessimistic in vision and big in execution. If this film had a slower pace, a smaller budget, and a less famous cast it likely wouldn’t have been as good, or as funny, but it might have received more positive reviews. The obvious comparison here is Idiocracy (2006), a far smaller, daffier film — and certainly one more prescient, since it was released 10 years before the arrival of the idiot Trump-train. But being a low-budget Mike Judge production — a niche film — it was less dangerous.

My guess is that Don’t Look Up‘s bitterly satiric stance threatens a middle-of-the road political complacency. It intimidates the reviewers’ apparent bedrock belief that our centrist, big-business establishment — be it left-leaning or right — will solve our real-life apocalypse movie: the global-warming disaster. That “profits over planet” mindset is a smugness that is killing us.

Admittedly, the satiric volume here — to use a Spinal Tap reference — is set at 11. But despite this volume, and a slightly excessive 2-1/4 hour length, Don’t Look Up is one of the best-executed comic movies in years. Its script bristles with witty, incisive details; its dramatic arc is effective. McKay is known for writing and directing The Big Short — one of the most lauded films of 2015 — as well as helming various funny but shallow comedies (Anchorman, The Other Guys). He had a ’90s stint as SNL’s head writer, not one of the show’s best eras. Broad sketch comedy may have paved the way for McKay, but rest assured: this film has some subtleties.

The first few scenes — depicting the discovery of the comet’s size and destructive course — are not played for laughs. Dr. Randall Mindy, a Michigan State University astronomy professor (DiCaprio), and his assistant, doctoral candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), discover a comet of mind-blowing size that, according to repeated calculations, is headed straight for Earth. Their certainty and shock are well dramatized. The two scientists are soon whisked off to DC, and by the time we see them waiting outside the Oval Office, anxious to see the president of the United States, the film has set up a tension that is palpable.

And then, the satire hits. We’ve seen Streep portray quiet, dignified power before. This isn’t it. She plays this future POTUS as a shallow monster of self-satisfaction, surrounded by photos of herself arm-in-arm with Hollywood celebrities. In the Oval Office, her smug smile is ever ready to turn to bored irritation. What she pulls off here is a letter-perfect encapsulation of the rotting soul of America. But still, she’s funny. Her own son is her chief-of-staff, Jason Orlean (Jonah Hill has fun playing an asshole, but it’s the film’s lone one-note performance.)

As Dr. Mindy tries to tell the world of its impending destruction, DiCaprio portrays, at first, a collapse of composure — something that is seemingly the most deplorable sin in a media-ready society where a confident outer shell has vanquished our deeper understandings.

Dr. Mindy: “It will have the power of a billion Hiroshima bombs.”

Jason: “You’re breathing weird. It’s making me uncomfortable.”

DiCaprio’s character travels a plausible arc here: first, he devolves into panic; then, with media coaching, transforms into a smooth, fatherly TV science-guy while simultaneously entering the sexy highlife as the adulterous lover of America’s most watched news-magazine host (an astonishing Cate Blanchett.) And then, by film’s end, he has believably revivified his humanity. Lawrence’s Kate Dibiasky’s reactions to her plight — from tense to tumultuous to totally checked out — make similar sense. Despite the bigger-than-life satiric thrust, one is emotionally tied to the two main characters.

Meryl Streep in Don’t Look Up.

Blanchett’s part isn’t huge, but she’s still able to dig beneath the shell of a shallow media star. Brie is the sex-hungry host of The Daily Rip, a meretricious Good Morning, America–type show that has either replaced newscasts, or just murdered them in the ratings. She’s a slick, sinuous over-achiever, highly educated, utterly amoral. When faced with a potentially emotional situation — be it a new bedmate desiring some innocuous personal info, or a furious wife confronting the adulterous couple — Brie simply looks bored and asks if it is really necessary to “do” this part of the routine. Yet Blanchett is so alive to the moment she can perceptively mine a hidden ore of humanity, a long buried nugget. When Dr. Mindy and Brie part ways — and the doctor tells her he’d been close to feeling love for her — Blanchett’s Brie is visibly startled by the word “love”: a look of shocked wistfulness flits over her glossy countenance, as if she’d just remembered love as a concept hidden away in a childhood memory. And then her eyes dismiss the idea as sadly irrelevant, and she’s gone. It is the kind of subtlety that humanizes a wicked satire, but doesn’t defang it.

The character of Sir Peter Isherwell, the billionaire tech guru and essentially the world’s most powerful man, is also a gem. Mark Rylance plays him as a robotic Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg type. His god-like algorhythmic control is so great that he knows more about every human than they do about themselves — and also can predict the exact date and cause of each human’s eventual death. (That tidbit is used to hilarious effect in the closing scene featuring President Orlean.) When Dr. Mindy criticizes Isherwell’s plan to monetize the looming catastrophe — calling it the thinking of “a businessman” — the mogul goes berserk at the perceived mega-insult.

Ariana Grande, Timothée Chalamet, Rob Morgan, and Melanie Lynskey are all excellent in this beautifully cast comedy.

In the end, the knee-jerk, hateful reviews of Don’t Look Up possess comments so outsized, and so beside the point, that they bear a resemblance to the oblivious thinking of the movie’s anti-science ostriches.

True satire is often deadly at the box office. Even a masterpiece like Alexander Payne’s 1999 Election lost money. Hollywood’s most common version — satire lite (a lightly scathing comedy with a happy ending) — is a far easier sell. It suggests to the viewer that heaven exists. But if the characters aren’t likable, the details not standard movie realism, the ending not cheery, the charges are often: How smug! How unrealistic! Don’t Look Up is intended as an active spin on reality, and not a charitable one. True satire is anti-romantic. It should come with a warning: cynicism, in the service of truth, is no sin. Is it possible, in 2022, to be cheered up by a good film about the bad end of the world? The thought that society sucks and then you die isn’t uplifting, true, but a smart film such as Don’t Look Up proves to the pessimists that we have company! We are not alone! We are not crazy! There are others like us on this Earth.


For 30 years, Daniel Gewertz wrote about music, theater and movies for the Boston Herald, among other periodicals. More recently, he’s published personal essays, taught memoir writing, and participated in the local storytelling scene. In the 1970s, at Boston University, he was best known for his Elvis Presley imitation.

36 Comments

  1. Al Krulick on January 4, 2022 at 7:08 pm

    Great writing about a truly excellent film.

    • Daniel Gewertz on January 10, 2022 at 11:06 pm

      Thanks, Al. Great to hear from you. I remember sitting with you at the Shamrock Bar in Inman Square, Cambridge on the night of Election Day 1980, an hour after it was announced that Ronald Reagan was to be our next president. We thought it was the end of America and the world. And in a way, we were right. Now, there is no Shamrock, and Ronald Reagan is held up by the mainstream media as a good guy Republican, the unTrumpian hero. But the road to American and planetary ruin was paved that night 41+ years ago.

    • JD on January 28, 2022 at 5:19 pm

      Great review: spot on! (But “algorhythmic”… hmm… not sure that’s a word!)

      • Callie on January 30, 2022 at 11:43 pm

        Well, but ‘algorithmic’ does, JD! So does algorithmically, in fact.

  2. Harvey Blume on January 4, 2022 at 9:09 pm

    I agree it’s a better movie than the sourpusses will allow. But I would add you don’t mention the reason I forgave it some of its undeniable infantilism, namely the camera pointed toward the starry cosmos near the end. At that point the film outflanked its tiktok pessimism and delivered to me, anyway, a feeling of awe.

    • Pam Steager on January 5, 2022 at 12:13 pm

      Agreed, especially in light of the current and literal unfolding of the Webb telescope. What new, amazing, and potentially frightening and awe-inspiring discoveries await us?

  3. Glenn Rifkin on January 4, 2022 at 9:46 pm

    When Karl Rove once defiantly proclaimed about the Bush White House that “we create our own reality,” Americans who cherish our democracy were not properly terrified by the notion that one of our two major political parties had essentially abdicated any and all responsibility toward preserving that democracy. The advent of Trump America put that notion on steroids and hastened the hellish rampage of lies, misinformation and denialism that pervades half of this nation. It is ugly and dark and stress-inducing in ways we of a certain age never dreamed we’d experience. So when a filmmaker decides to take direct aim at the maelstrom with a dark satire, one that forces us to examine the insanity but gives us the release of laughter in the face of doom, it should be celebrated. Don’t Look Up is not a great movie but it is an important one at an opportune time. People condemning it are taking the wrongs things way too seriously.

  4. MJ Doherty on January 5, 2022 at 12:06 pm

    Glad to read this review and the follow-up comments. I’m on board.

    Trying to figure out why the film didn’t ‘hit’, the way The Big Short’ did.
    It might be an editing thing – too much slam bam; story kind of implodes with its unrelenting humor. But, I loved the writing and wish, above all, that the groups being satirized see themselves. (Right. Like that’s going to happen…)

  5. Rhoda on January 5, 2022 at 12:20 pm

    It is a ridiculous over the top rightly criticized by critics. If the critics are saying they don’t like it then that must mean something…do we really need overpaid, delusional, totally not in reality rich celebs telling us what to think? Probably not…

    • Bill Marx, Editor of The Arts Fuse on January 5, 2022 at 12:31 pm

      Maybe not — but maybe so — when celebrities are amplifying what the leading scientists have been warning us about for decades, forecasts of disaster that have not been receiving sufficiently serious attention from our “overpaid, delusional, totally not in reality” leaders and mainstream media.

    • JCH on January 5, 2022 at 1:26 pm

      Apparently we really do need that.

    • VBW on January 15, 2022 at 3:15 pm

      At the very end, when the personality on Patriot News says that the only issue people are paying attention to at that moment was “Topless urgent care centers” I thought, yeah, that pretty much sums up our news coverage of not only climate change , but the forty-year evisceration of our democracy (true journalists, especially investigative ones, are a dying breed and we have been left with personalities in journalists’ clothing).

      A bit of me feels like the movie itself is the dinner among friends for those of us who do not see us getting out of this. As we lose democracies, we lose our best chance to manage climate change. So, cheers.

  6. Merrill Kaitz on January 5, 2022 at 8:49 pm

    It’s a good movie not a great one, as many have said. But it’s entertaining. Far from constantly funny– the writing only occasionally rises to either very apt, or hilarious. But the simple Cassandra story works –mostly, I think, because it is essentially correct about the terrifying things happening in our world.
    One thing it is not is celebrities telling us what to think– these are actors, doing their actual job, very well. They may be well known actors, but they are doing what they do best– getting the ideas of writers and a director across to us– and it is writers who do the job of dramatizing, or humorizing, a viewpoint. I have no idea if this movie will have any affect on our urgencies–probably not. It won’t be alone in this. And I agree with the reviewer– that extreme negativity about the film has probably got political motivation at its base.

  7. LGreenawald on January 5, 2022 at 9:59 pm

    Excellent film! Completely concur with Gewertz’ review. I just hope the people that need to see both, actually do!!

  8. MAS on January 5, 2022 at 11:18 pm

    It was a great movie but too sad and depressing. I am a scientist and I saw so many scenes not as parody but totally factual events I have actually lived. In the end, I do wonder if we deserve this planet, and if as a species we deserve to be here. Anyways, just talking to the vacuum.

    • Vincent Czyz on January 6, 2022 at 11:57 am

      Thank you so much for this insight. It’s so rare to get a scientist’s perspective on a film like this and yet so very necessary at this point in time.

  9. Vincent Czyz on January 6, 2022 at 8:46 am

    No wonder journalists have slated it. They’ve produced a hundred excuses not to watch the climate breakdown satire Don’t Look Up: it’s “blunt”, it’s “shrill”, it’s “smug”. But they will not name the real problem: it’s about them. The movie is, in my view, a powerful demolition of the grotesque failures of public life. And the sector whose failures are most brutally exposed is the media. –George Monbiot, The Guardian

    • Daniel Gewertz on January 10, 2022 at 10:56 pm

      One thought I had while writing the piece was that the film-critics who absolutely loathed it were not all right-wing capitalists who’d love to squash the ecology movement, but mainstream types who, like many millions of others, don’t wish to be rudely reminded that we have already arrived at the birth of the end. In other words, the smug and the blind… but not the extremists who claim global warming is all overblown lefty radical nonsense. It must be unnerving to get reminded that maybe you, and surely your grandchildren, will suffer and die because of your cowardice and blasé numbskull obliviousness. So, sure, blame it all on rich movie stars!

      • John Hoffland on February 24, 2022 at 10:43 pm

        You touched on it briefly in the review but it really hit me how the response of reviewers to this film is a perfect, seemingly unwitting reflection of all the establishment types in the film: My God, do we really have to be hit over the head with all this depressing mess! Lighten up!
        Well, whether the film changes anybody’s mind is up for debate but this film simply had to be made. I would also like to mention a non-satirical but parallel vision of society in a made-for PBS film, The Peoples Republic of Desire. A truly sad and terrifying view of China’s digital idol-making world.

  10. Thomas Garvey on January 8, 2022 at 3:56 pm

    Vincent Czyz mentions climate activist George Monbiot, so I just wanted to point out that Monbiot’s famous breakdown on “Good Morning Britain” last year now seems like an eerie harbinger of Jennifer Lawrence’s crack-up on “The Daily Rip” in the movie. And therein lies the rub for the film’s detractors: how can “Don’t Look Up” be “over the top” and “smug” when so many of its turning points mimic real-life incidents? I agree, btw, with Daniel Gewertz’s suggestion that film critics unconsciously saw themselves in its sights – hence the vituperative pans; this insight has already begun to generate its own discussion online, btw. (Film critics don’t support climate denial, yet can’t see how they’re part of the system supporting it – discuss!!) But I would take some issue with a few of Gewertz’s comments. The movie is often great – no question – but it IS choppy, and there’s a kind of vagueness to the satire at its core. In my opinion, Streep never quite finds her feet in the role of President Orlean, and I think it’s partly because McKay hasn’t delineated the role as sharply as he might have. You could describe Orlean as a Trump-Hillary hybrid; one part nepotist redneck, one part Hollywood/Silicon Valley glad-hander. But how exactly do these two parts come together . . ? Orlean’s persona never quite taps into the tribal/racist glue that keeps Trump’s coalition together – nor is McKay willing to take the gloves off when it comes to the Democratic Party’s financial romance with Silicon Valley. So there’s a kind of void at the heart of the movie – but still much (MUCH) to love about it. I’m heartened to see it’s back to #1 on Netflix, with 150 million viewing hours last week alone. That’s what, maybe 70 million viewers? Sounds like a global hit to me . . .

  11. Daniel Gewertz on January 10, 2022 at 11:23 pm

    Love your parenthetical comment on film critics denying they are part of the system. I don’t think there are two equal parts to Streep’s prez. There’s far more Hillary than Trump, but not meant to be a specific statement on the Dem’s Silicon Valley corrupt romance. Her character is slippery and slimy as today, just two steps further down smug road.

    • Thomas Garvey on January 15, 2022 at 11:12 am

      Well, not to go on and on about it, but when Streep is eventually shown sporting a MAGA-style hat at a redneck rally, it’s hard to believe she’s not intended to reflect Trump in some way. Her dumb-as-f son likewise channels Don Jr. and Eric far more than Chelsea. And while I’m not at all disagreeing with you about the Clinton slime factor, there’s a famously studious, by-the-numbers core to Hillary that Streep also doesn’t tap. I actually think a character working the common ground between Clinton and Trump was an inspired idea; I just don’t think Streep and McKay give it the same brilliant edge they brought to so much else in this remarkable film.

  12. Ed L. on January 12, 2022 at 8:54 am

    The most entertaining aspect of this mediocre film is the subsequent civil war between America’s blue and red political tribes — a war about a movie, for Chrissake. Led by General Chicken Little, the Blue tribe squawks that global warming is going to destroy the world in “six months and fourteen days.” General Little and his hens have been bawk-bawking this alarm for approximately 52 years. The red tribe responds by digging in even deeper, denying objective reality itself. Why? Because tribalism, like religion, is a powerful drug.

    • Bill Marx, Editor of The Arts Fuse on January 12, 2022 at 12:52 pm

      Glad he is entertained. This is the kind of muddled, curse-on-both-your houses thinking that is about finding a way to blame the left for being alarmist. If only those who believed in climate change had been reasonable instead of a bunch of Chicken Littles — curse them! Yes, there is objective reality — but it has to sold in a palatable way to the non-tribal. A marketing problem!

      Reputable scientists since the ’70s have talked about the slow but sure progression of Climate Change. There has been an ongoing controversy about just how fast changes were going to come about. Looks like the transformation may be happening at a quicker clip than predicted: “Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.”

  13. Tom Connolly on January 14, 2022 at 10:49 am

    I tried to watch it the first time, but gave up after half an hour. I managed to finish it the second time. The film is too clever by three-quarters. Meryl Streep’s presence alone (after her bizarre “Laundromat” turn) threatens to reduce the film to a stunt. The rest of the big names in the cast make good that threat. It reminds me of Mars Attacks more than Dr. Strangelove. McKay’s buckshot approach can’t possibly hit any of the targets he aims for. Rejecting subtlety throughout the film, he strangely opts for sentimentality in a family dinner finale worthy of a Saturday Evening Post cover—without Norman Rockwell’s edge. Soon after this, the film tries to throw a punch via the tramp stamp revealed on Streep’s body double’s exposed lower back. A weak joke follows the endless credits. McKay’s lack of comic timing is the pay-off.

  14. Debbie on January 14, 2022 at 9:54 pm

    This movie is terrible. I only attempted watch it because Leonardo had the lead role. But unfortunately it was a huge Titanic. In the sinking way. To me, it made fun of our joke of a government, which, without a doubt is true. But really. The president, and the presidents “coke head” right hand. The best part, is when she was killed.

  15. Gerald Peary on January 16, 2022 at 1:40 pm

    Too much carping at critics, Dan, for not sharing your opinion. I am one of those lame critics who didn’t think much of this movie, but my disappointments come from the left and hopefully not from the mainstream. Much of the movie is smug and obvious and badly done comedy. I loathed all the stuff with Meryl as President. Surprisingly it came together for me in the hardest part to pull off, the apocalytpic ending. Otherwise, pretty mediocre, and proof once again that a great theme doesn’t necessarily make a good film. I recall the NY Times critic raving on and on about the end-of-the-world 1950 film, On the Beach, predicting it would be remembered forever, generation after generation. Wrong! Nobody remembers this crappy movie with a stirring Big Theme. I predict the same fate for Don’t Look Up. There were at least sixty better films in 2021.

    • Bill Marx, Editor of The Arts Fuse on January 16, 2022 at 4:26 pm

      I would not call Don’t Look Up smug so much as lazy. It is a slip slide mix of sketch comedy, broad satire, and sentimentality. The script could have been much sharper. (The fossil fuel industry, for example, a fount of climate change misinformation and political corruption, is pretty well given a pass.) Perhaps, as more irreparable damage is done to the earth and its vulnerable populations, we will generate comedies as scathing as Dr Strangelove. Though I think dramas that tap into the absurdist comedy of Beckett and Ionesco would be more fitting. A writer just needs to rejigger a sentiment in Endgame: “Nothing is funnier than extinction, I grant you that…”

      We are moving in that tragic direction. This from the January 10 Guardian on US carbon emissions: “We expected a rebound but it’s dismaying that emissions came back even faster than the overall economy,” said Kate Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group, the independent research firm that conducted the analysis. “We aren’t just reducing the carbon intensity of the economy, we are increasing it. We are doing exactly the opposite of what we need to be doing.”

      I take critic James Agee’s position: films are mass entertainment and don’t need to be complete successes to be of use. Let us hope that this is the first of a number of movies, documentaries, plays, books, etc that take up the slack left by the mainstream news media, which has found that covering the climate crisis in a sustained fashion is not good for ratings. (It can be so alarming.) If the popular success of Don’t Look Up — and the conversations it is spurring — inspires other efforts, it will be worth remembering …

    • Thomas Garvey on January 20, 2022 at 3:13 pm

      Well, that’s classic Gerald Peary right there.

    • Daniel Gewertz on January 26, 2022 at 6:39 pm

      It may be labeled a movie review, but it is clear from the pull-quote at the start to the multiple paragraphs at its center that this is a view of the reviews. That is its main thrust. When a movie this well-crafted and timely is massacred by so many critics with such vitriol and venomous platitudes, it makes me think that something very odd is going on here. and that’s what I wrote about. To be clear, I have not been a semi-regular movie critic since about 1995, and with the plunge of quality in both big-budget and indy films in recent years I certainly don’t want to be one now. But I am well-schooled enough in 20th century cinema to realize the oddity of your bringing up a deadly serious, plodding social drama such as “On the Beach” (Stanley Kramer, 1959) in reference to the satiric comedy “Don’t Look Up.” Let us fight about directors, critics and genres another time! But I hope we can avoid the ancient fights from the ’60s about Grade B films being better than Grade A or vice versa. Now we have 100 million dollar budgets for Grade B schlock, and substantial takes on big social themes are nearly nonexistent.

  16. Jay Malherbe on February 9, 2022 at 3:23 am

    Well guys, from the perspective of a South African (who LOVED the movie) all the above comments prove there are still a lot of right-thinking people in America. All is not lost!

  17. Shelley Joyce on February 20, 2022 at 8:44 am

    Thank goodness for this review – I watched last night, and aside from it being about 30 mins too long, thorough enjoyed it for all the reasons you state. This is why I only read the reviews *after* watching/reading and deciding for myself. But I’ll definitely stay tuned for yours in future

  18. Daniel Gewertz on February 21, 2022 at 6:30 pm

    Thanks, Shelley. No matter how many oddball reviews are out there, from critics and fans alike, at least it is better than the old days, when all that was available, pre-Internet, for non-current films, was Leonard Maltin’s annual book, where “Sophie’s Choice” was given 2 & 1/2 stars, but a soapy western called “The Naked Spur” got 3 & 1/2.

  19. Thomas Garvey on July 21, 2022 at 3:12 pm

    The critics who carped about “Don’t Look Up” might well cringe at watching this recent side-by-side comparison of one of the film’s “satiric” sequences and a recent British television segment on climate change . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzzGlyeI2WM

  20. b church on September 26, 2022 at 6:06 pm

    Coming in late to the party here, but this is the single-handedly best drive-by analysis of this amazing movie. Truth is, almost everyone took some form of offense to “Don’t Look Up”. And I get that, truly, I do. It’s acerbic and pointed – just as much as it’s an equal opportunity offender. It’s equally as vicious towards deep blue as it is deep red, it’s unrelenting on today’s op-ed driven ‘news for dipshits’ journalism, social media driving the importance of news, hell, even the name of the liquor store “DrinkMo!” is a harsh indictment (to say nothing of the $700 shovels, the importance of which we’ll never understand).

    Is it a perfect film? I don’t know – that’s so relative. But it’s unrelentingly honest and it’s got some very sharp teeth. It’s the doomsday version of “Idiocracy”, who’s crucial flaw is the assumption humankind is going to make it another 100 years (much less 500).

    I really appreciate your analysis. Most of the negative reviews are from people who feel oddly singled out… or from people who can’t appreciate just how accurate the hyperbole of it all is. Like Idiocracy? It’s not saying anything that’s not already true.

  21. Derek MacElwain on December 23, 2022 at 5:01 pm

    This movie was brilliant in the sense that human-driven climate change should be just as obvious as a giant rock about to fall on our heads.

    It was also a total lost cause from the get-go because it was always guaranteed to fail to reach and educate the ostriches who defecate on peer-reviewed science in favor of worshipping a Bronze Age book of fairy tales, and believe that an invisible wizard from beyond the sky will save us all with his magical powers if we’re just pious enough.

    At this point, there is just one thing that will save this world’s future: America falling off the top of the mountain, as quickly as possible. Say what you want about China’s human rights record, but Beijing would never let brain-dead religious fools or moneygasming businessmen to stop them from nuking that comet out of the sky. Neither would any other national government not located in a city called Washington. The level of self-destructive stupidity our nation has reached is beyond any possibility of hope or redemption until our time to be in control of the world has passed. Even then, I give us a 50% chance of just socially imploding from within.

    If the leadership of humanity is spread between Chinese, Indians, Europeans, and every other civilized nation in the world, with America out of the way, the entire planet has a far better chance than it does right now.

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