Movie Review Don't Look Up

 

                                                                                                        courtesy Netflix

 

     Adam McKay, a long time writer for Saturday Night Live is the writer, producer behind The Big Short, Vice and his latest  Don’t Look Up  which is nominated for several Academy Awards.

    The film is about an astronomy team that discovers a comet is on a collision course with Earth. Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Bibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) along with well connected Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) try to warn everyone of the impending catastrophe event. It doesn't go too well.

     The reaction ranges from political indifference by President Orlean (Meryl Streep) who is more concerned with how to spin it along with her chief of staff son (Jonah Hill). There is the media's fluff response from morning show co hosts played to perfection by Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett, followed by cynical greed personified in the truly creepy Peter Isherwell, (Mark Rylance) a tech billionaire who discovers the comet is worth trillions of dollars in precious minerals scarce on Earth and plans to mine it rather than divert it's path.

    The film manages to be hilarious and scary in equal measure. There is no attempt at subtlety and comes off as ham fisted at times but no more so than the social media and politics it lampoons and that's the point.

    All the performances from the top notch cast are spot on-Michael Chiklis, Pual Gulifoyle, Melanie Lynskey, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, down to a small role by Timothee Chalamant--who is in every thing these days. Many of the characters are clearly based on real saboteurs in our current bizarro world.

    The message highlights just how screwed up we are, and how ill prepared we are for real disaster. Response to 9/11, earthquakes and the current pandemic, are examples of calamity, chaos and clusterfuck--in that order.

    The ending is poignant and darkly comedic as the good go with dignity and warmth while the bad are seen as the inept nitwits who failed out of narcissistic greed.

 

 

Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Timothee Chalamant Adam McKay