peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2021 12 28 DontLookUp

Don't Look Up

Tue, Dec 28, 2021./noise/movies | Link

I enjoyed Adam McKay's earlier work (e.g. The Big Short, not so much Vice) as it tried hard to bring complex topics to general audiences. This one is a heavy handed comedy that tries to satirize the present-day U.S. political situation, a task that as a foreigner I think is close to impossible and certainly futile. Briefly Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio play astronomer-scientists who discover that (catastrophic) facts aren't worth much in 2021. The kink in the middle brings the brilliant Mark Rylance's billionaire Peter Isherwell to the fore. I didn't enjoy the White House shenanigans so much; Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill play to the eye rolling in-crowd, as does #himtoo Himesh Patel but to a lesser extent. Cate Blanchett has the most fun as a talk show host. Overall it's not as engaging as it needed to be.

Jason Di Rosso interviewed McKay. Manohla Dargis.