At the end of Adam McKay's 2015 film The Big Short, a title card declares that the real-life inspiration for Steve Carell's character resisted the urge to say "I told you so" after the 2008 financial crisis. McKay himself, however, has exhibited no such restraint. Since pivoting from goofy comedy to political satire with The Big Short, the filmmaker has been in full-on "I told you so" mode, first about the financial crisis in The Big Short, then about former Vice President Dick Cheney in 2018's Vice, and now about climate change in Don't Look Up.
While The Big Short and Vice were based on true events, Don't Look Up is ostensibly science fiction, although its central metaphor is as blunt and obvious as the comet that a pair of astronomers discover hurtling toward Earth. The early scenes of Don't Look Up play like the openings of dozens of disaster movies, as Ph.D. student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) observes a previously unknown comet in outer space, and her adviser, Dr. Randall Minsky (Leonardo DiCaprio), calculates, with mounting horror, that in six months the comet will strike Earth and destroy all human life.
From there, Kate and Randall alert the authorities, starting with NASA scientist Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), and soon they've been granted an audience with U.S. President Orlean (Meryl Streep). Randall is nervous, and Kate is confrontational, and President Orlean doesn't take their presentation seriously. They've warned her of the imminent extinction of the human race, but she's more concerned about poll numbers.
Don't Look Up could end right after that scene, because nothing in the subsequent two hours cleverly or meaningfully expands on the point that McKay has already made. For all their annoying smugness, both The Big Short and Vice were at least informative about real people and events, but other than a single signature McKay freeze frame with an infographic early in the movie, Don't Look Up does not enlighten or educate the audience. The climate change allegory is heavy-handed but not insightful, and the secondary parallels to the pandemic are similarly unsophisticated.
If Don't Look Up were more successful as comedy, it wouldn't matter as much whether it was saying anything substantive. McKay could have created a parody of disaster movies like Michael Bay's Armageddon or the recent Gerard Butler apocalypse thriller Greenland, but Don't Look Up is only mildly comedic, and its two main characters are depicted with the seriousness that their message would warrant. Neither Lawrence nor DiCaprio are known for comedy, and they play things mostly straight.
McKay attempts to give both Randall and Kate individual character arcs amid the chaos, as Randall becomes an unlikely celebrity and falls into an affair with a glamorous TV host (Cate Blanchett), while Kate is eventually ostracized from the planetary rescue effort. The personal drama never registers, especially as it's surrounded by such broad absurdity.
There are more overtly comedic performances in the supporting cast, most notably from Jonah Hill as President Orlean's douchebro son and chief of staff. Hill gets the most laughs, while other side characters, including Mark Rylance as an avuncularly sinister tech billionaire and Ariana Grande as a vapid pop star, are more baffling than funny.
McKay seems to be aiming for something like Dr. Strangelove or Wag the Dog, but Don't Look Up isn't as sharp or outrageous as those movies, plodding along toward its predetermined outcome, filled with flashy special effects and big-name stars in small parts. Like the government's misguided efforts to stop the comet, it's an expensive, unwieldy distraction that accomplishes nothing. ♦
