Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 18 minutes
Director: Adam McKay
Quick Impressions:
We do have Netflix, but we couldn’t wait until December 24th to watch Don’t Look Up. My husband has been dying to see it since the first trailer. He’s been recommending it to everyone (before we had even seen it!). My daughter was furious that we went without her because thanks to my husband’s enthusiasm, around our house Don’t Look Up is generating more excitement than advent. In fact, had someone given us news that an actual planet-ending comet was headed toward Earth right now, my husband would have no doubt replied, “That reminds me of the plot of this great movie I heard about called Don’t Look Up! Meryl Streep plays the president!” Then he would make them watch the trailer.
(To curtail my daughter’s resentment, I reminded her that I’m taking her to see West Side Story this weekend. Of course, she then pointed out that she didn’t even like the original West Side Story. “That’s not true,” I said. “You just thought Natalie Wood was miscast. You liked Rita Moreno, and she’s in it again, and they’re not even painting her this time.” I guess I’ll talk more about that after we’ve seen Spielberg’s take on West Side Story.)
My husband and I always like Adam McKay (especially his Oscar nominated films). One of our hobbies is railing at each other about social injustice, economic inequality, and environmental collapse. (We agree with each other on all points. We just enjoy ranting back and forth about the ills of this world and then yelling supportively, “Yeah!” It’s very satisfying.) My husband also credits Tallageda Nights with making him understand the importance of an editor. (He still talks about this all the time. “In the theater that movie was so funny, but then in that DVD version where they left in every improvised joke, the scenes dragged on too long, and it ruined the pacing of the movie!” It was a revelation to him!)
The Big Short he adored. (I liked it, too, just not as much as he did, and it made me quite paranoid about running out of drinking water.) (I haven’t taken steps to fix the problem; just every time I sip now, I think, “Oh no!”) Vice I found a bit more confusing since the movie was obviously a comedy skewering the Cheneys (and their worldview and policies), but Amy Adams and Christian Bale played their characters so well that they almost became sympathetic. Compared to Vice, Don’t Look Up seems both less ambitious and more focused. I think it’s a stronger film, but it’s also trying to do less. When I call it less ambitious, I mean that there’s no messy complexity here. This is dark satire. The film’s message is very clear. If we don’t get it by the end of the movie, then that’s on us. (Personally, I got the idea the moment Leonardo DiCaprio showed up in the trailer.) Also, the protagonists are on our side (most of the time), so there’s really no doubt what our takeaway should be.
The Good:
The film has a fantastic, all-star cast that just doesn’t quit, and some of the best jokes are in the cast list. My husband’s favorite actress, Meryl Streep (to her obvious glee) plays a female president who’s definitely channeling some Donald Trumpish energy. (Her son (Jonah Hill) works for her and keeps commenting on how hot she is. If she weren’t his mother…) It’s hard not to imagine that Streep must be enjoying herself. Even better, her name is President Orlean. (Have you seen Adaptation? She plays a (heavily) fictionalized version of The Orchid Thief author Susan Orlean in that. She won a Golden Globe, got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and totally sold me on the movie Adaptation. I wasn’t convinced I liked it until her character went off the rails at the end. Suddenly the whole concept of the film became very funny.)
This really makes me wonder if all of the characters’ names are inside jokes of some kind. I’m going to have to look into it.
Mark Rylance plays Peter Isherwell, the odd-ball (and presumed genius) head a of popular tech company (known for its smart phones). Halfway through the movie, I leaned over and whispered to my husband, “Wait. Doesn’t Mark Rylance play the guy who made all the tech in Ready Player One?” He does. He’s a somewhat more benevolent figure in that film, but that he’s playing such a similar (yet more sinister and ineffectual) character here doesn’t feel like a coincidence.
Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio thinks that the world is facing a massive, extinction-level threat, and he’s trying desperately to warn people, but almost no one is listening. And in this movie, he plays a scientist from Michigan who’s trying to warn people about a comet. Of everyone in the film’s massive cast, it’s DiCaprio who seems most likely to get an Oscar nomination. This is one of those movies where everyone contributes, increasing the film’s chances of a Best Picture nomination. Yet very few of the actors are given a showcased role that would get them Oscar attention as individuals. As far as I can tell, only DiCaprio has the opportunity to give a performance that might get recognized. It helps that he has this massive Peter-Finch-in-Network moment near the end of the movie. (“That was just like Network, right?” I double-checked with my husband in the car. He didn’t know what I was talking about because he didn’t watch many movies before he met me. When I got home, I watched the scene on YouTube, to confirm my suspicions. (It’s pretty obviously an intentional reference. I just like to double-check everything.) (Watching that scene has left me thinking, “You know who really deserves to win an Oscar? Peter Finch in Network!” But I guess he already did, so…)
Admittedly, I’m a DiCaprio fan, but I think the character is enough of a change of pace for him that he could perhaps get Oscar recognition. (Most of the time, he’s less over-the-top than usual. And he manages to be very funny at unexpected moments. His line about photoshop actually made me chuckle out loud. To me, that was one of the funniest moments of the movie. Even though this is a comedy, it’s very grim.)
Jennifer Lawrence I haven’t seen in a movie for a long time. She’s cast as a woman who reacts appropriately to impending doom, so everyone says she’s crazy. This is a good part for her, and she’s probably the most sympathetic character in the film, playing Kate Dibiasky, the grad student who discovers the comet. Of course, Lawrence is very good at saying “crazy” things and showing extreme emotion. I loved watching her. Kate is one of the bright points in a dark story. And the running joke she has about paying for snacks may be my favorite thing in the entire movie. (I don’t see how Lawrence could possibly sneak into Best Actress, though. It’s already overcrowded, and DiCaprio has a much showier part that also allows him to display more range.)
Joining Lawrence and DiCaprio is Rob Morgan as a top NASA official. His character is one of the saner people in the film. Also fascinating to me were characters played by Cate Blanchett and Timothée Chalamet. Based on the trailer, I thought the two of them had glorified cameos, but they play fully realized (and legitimately surprising) characters who enhance the story quite a bit.
And there are a thousand more famous people in this movie, too. Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi are extremely well utilized as an on again/off again celebrity couple. Ron Perlman plays a guy who’s a little Bruce Willis, a little Randy Quaid, and a little Ron Perlman in a movie. He’s the hero who’s volunteered to rocket to space and blow up the comet. Everyone in Don’t Look Up is famous, Tyler Perry, Melanie Lynskey, Himesh Patel, Michael Chiklis, and Paul Guilfoyle as a general who inspires probably the best running joke in the film. The cast doesn’t stop.
If you like satire, Don’t Look Up should appeal to you. It mercilessly skewers our entire society, commenting on all of its flaws—political spin, internet vapidity, the uselessness of the press, the oppressive omnipresence of clickbait, class disparity, pharmaceuticals run amok, the trend of showcasing (yet discrediting) the mentally ill, the unsettling emptiness of…everything, and, of course, the fact that if an inconvenient truth ever comes along, most people prefer to ignore it (and those who don’t are powerless to stop it).
Though unquestionably a comedy, Don’t Look Up doesn’t always make us laugh. In fact, it left me with the vague feeling that I might cry later. (I didn’t laugh often, but the movie does have a lot of callback humor and running jokes, which I always appreciate. And Meryl Streep looks like she’s having so much fun playing the president that I considered taking up smoking.) (Not really, but I did imagine writing that sentence.)
Most Oscar-worthy moment, Leonardo DiCaprio:
Late in the film, DiCaprio’s Dr. Mindy has a scene that appears to be an homage to Peter Finch’s, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore,” rant in Network.
Best Song:
You have no idea how much I want the song Ariana Grande performs late in the film to be nominated (and performed) at the Oscars. I think it’s a great song (especially for awards recognition). It reminds me a little of “Blame Canada,” in that I think the Oscar ceremony would be improved by Grande performing it there.
Best Scene:
I sort of enjoyed the weird menace Mark Rylance brings to the off-putting Peter Isherwell. Dr. Mindy’s confrontation with Isherwell is well acted by both DiCaprio and Rylance. (Can that really be the best scene? Surely not.) I suppose another great moment comes when Dr. Mindy and Kate spot the comet in the sky with their naked eyes, and then everyone starts looking up.
Best Scene Visually:
There’s a visual joke late in the film when DiCaprio’s character is really down, and we see a certain familiar image on his phone.
At the very end of the movie, we also get a scene that features a lot of nudity. (“They waited until the very end for the nudity,” my husband noted in the car on the way home. “And it wasn’t very much nudity.”
“Um, there was full frontal male nudity,” I countered.
“You don’t see anything very long, though,” he said.
“That’s because Jonah Hill’s not in that scene,” I replied. I was stunned that there was a scene featuring full frontal male nudity that didn’t involve Jonah Hill because I swear every time I see him in a movie, he finds some way to work in a penis joke, visual if possible.)
(Honestly, I was just glad that we got the payoff of an earlier joke that I had been waiting and waiting for (and pretty accurately predicted).)
Another scene I liked visually is also near the end, when DiCaprio, Lawrence, and Chalamet are traveling by car on a deserted highway on a winter day. The image of one car on the road is pretty memorable, as is the scene around the dinner table.
Best Action Sequence:
I always like it when Jennifer Lawrence starts screaming. The launch of the Ron Perlman rocket is a pretty gripping scene, too.
The Negatives:
The movie is very long, and this is coming from someone who liked it.
It’s just so long. In fact, it was so long that at one point, I consciously thought to myself, “You know, if a comet really were coming, I’ll bet it would have time to crash into the Earth and kill us all before the end of this movie.”
Also—again coming from someone who liked the movie—it is very, very self-righteous. And that’s fine with me because I (broadly) agree with most of the points that it’s making. But it seems to want to effect change, and it’s certainly not going to win over any of the people that it’s so blatantly and mercilessly skewering. Nobody is going to watch this movie, recognize themselves as one of the people being satirized and say, “Wow. I really am a horrible person. I need to change my ways to help humanity.” That will not happen. So I guess as the planet slowly dies of massive ecological and economic crises we can all laugh spitefully at the jerks who got us into this fix? The people being mocked and ridiculed won’t change their minds. They’ll change the channel. They’ll say, “That movie was garbage.” (To be far, the movie mocks everyone, but it ridicules some a lot more harshly than others. And then I guess my question is, what is the goal of this film? To use a church metaphor, I feel like the audience who seeks this out is the choir, and you’re just preaching to them for two hours. That probably won’t change anything.) (And I’m positive Leonardo DiCaprio is involved because he wants change.)
The other problem is that by pointing out the foibles of an extreme group of “bad guys,” the movie runs the risk of leaving us with the impression that all of our woes are someone else’s fault. But you know, every one of us makes both good and bad choices every day. Every one of us can be better. (And possibly we’re all a little at fault. Or if we’re not, what can we do about it, anyway? We haven’t been able to do anything up till now.)
Don’t Look Up is also very dark. It’s so dark. It’s a dark, bleak, cynical satire. (On the way home, my husband said, “Of course, I was hoping that X would happen,” and I was like, “What?! That was never going to happen! If that happened, Leonardo DiCaprio would have just wasted two hours. When he’s yelling into the camera to look up, he really means it. He is yelling to you and me! They’re not going to want an ending that undermines the whole point. Never.”) So for me, there’s an unsettling element of, “Yes, our whole society sure is awful, all right! Merry Christmas to you, too. Please enjoy the helpless reflection on the horribleness of life this movie inspires on the increasingly dark winter days to come.”
But now, I will admit, this persistent darkness combined with the unwavering tone of self-righteousness does make Don’t Look Up a far stronger film than Vice that gave the impression of never quite being able to decide just what it wanted to be and what it was trying to say. We know what this movie wants to say. It says it. Emphatically.
And, it does leave us with something warm and comforting, too. When times get dark enough, maybe we can have a few moments of fleeting joy if only we can find a way to make out with Timothée Chalamet. (No, I’m kidding. Chalamet’s character is one of several who show that there are good things to be found in our world, too. Sometimes people will surprise you in positive ways if you let them.)
Overall:
My husband says that Don’t Look Up is his favorite movie of the year so far. I liked it, too, though I’ll have to see it again before I decide how much. (That shouldn’t be a problem. My daughter is dying to watch it and not thrilled that we didn’t take her the first time.) A strong ensemble effort, Don’t Look Up draws our attention to the fact that we need to treasure every moment that we have with people we love because let’s face it, no matter how bad things may seem now, something worse is coming soon.