Adam McKay makes big swings, and for me that is always commendable, however also for me I hate when that is all that I can say for a film. Fortunately that is not the case here. McKay has employed the production and film-making techniques of huge star-studded 70’s and 90’s disaster fare to make a climate change (and of course COVID, not that they knew that) analogy that is as simple and fundamental as it needs to be at this point in the game. However again I can’t stand films that only have a message to state, without offering us any entertainment value either. Fortunately, again, that is not the case here. To put it plainly I greatly enjoyed my Christmas Eve morning with Don’t Look Up. Sorry for the delay in review release, by the way.  

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When it comes to Don’t Look Up, one is immediately faced with the terrifying concept once more that satire is possibly dead. Now that is a bold click-baity statement that I don’t mean to come off as such, but for me when it comes to one very specific brand of satire I’d have to agree. We now live in a world where we can never seen an outlandish or cartoonishly business focussed president in media ever again and be able to laugh and pass it off as ridiculous . That’s not exactly a bad thing, because this horrid truth only bolsters the sentiment the film is presenting to us. This leads onto perhaps the films biggest criticism; it’s hardly subtle. But frankly does it have to be? The conceit is a frankly terrifying one and obvious in its metaphorical nature, but such is the nature of the entire film – a bombastic, farcical, chaotic piece of comedy with a tragedy at its core. Let’s not get highfalutin here, but this is the world we live in now in the media landscape – it is huge stars and its broad comedy and its loud simplistic messages and part of the painful joy of the film is that for all its loudness and all its intrigue, any liberal viewer already understands going in that the film is preaching to the choir, which of course is how the plot of the film goes. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Adam McKay knows that his film isn’t subtle and also knows that it’s not going to make any sort of valid impact on the community it’s trying to reach, hence the tragedy of its conclusion, hence the painful truth that underlies the whole feature. And finally hence why this is a comedy, so that we can laugh at all of this and not make this an entirely pointless viewing experience. Because if this film has one huge strength from my point of view, it’s that it’s funny as sh*t. To be coarse, of course.

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The films biggest selling point has always been it’s incredible cast of performers that have been gathered and so there’s a lot to parse. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are our core to take us through the whole thing, or at least they seem to be, with Rob Morgan rather giving us the actual sensible centre in a nuanced and almost past the point of caring performance that’s as unsettling in it’s resignment as it is humorous in its seriousness. DiCaprio and Lawrence both share fun arcs that give us two very winning turns to pin our flag to as the film begins to spiral more and more out of control and introduce more and more figures into the fray. DiCaprio is stellar as always and Lawrence is more winning than she has been in some time. Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett offer us outlandish but naturally charismatic and lovable depictions of figures who we know far too well, with Tracey Morgan and Ron Perlman too giving us subtler turns in comparison to the rest of the bunch. Arianna Grande is painfully annoying, but is in on the joke and so I can’t say that she’s annoying, but rather that her character is and intentionally. The two clear standouts are of course Jonah Hill and Mark Rylance. With Rylance giving a genuinely exceptional performance of a most manically insane Zuckerberg/Musk/Bezos figure, with some of the most unsettlingly humorous scenes and line deliveries of the year. With Hill just bringing his absolute A-game as the biggest d*ck we’ve seen in a long time, hilariously funny absolutely whenever he appears, never missing a beat or a single zinger. All of this madness is propelled by Nicholas Britell’s suitably jazzy and cacophonously manic score, that brings all of this chaos together in not exactly a neat bow, but a suitably musically messy one, whilst also fundamentally helping the pacing and majoritivley montage based presentation the film chooses. Again, I have to state that the reason I liked this film so much was down to its humour, nothing else. If the film wasn’t as funny as it was, then maybe I would feel differently about the way it depicts what it depicts, but I never did feel such a way because I was too busy laughing most of the time.  

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An epic 8/10 comedy that spends its time screaming rather than calmly explaining, but that’s not the films job. Anybody can look up the facts that have been there since the late 80’s even. That is not this film, nor does it have to be. This is a furiously chaotic piece of passionate feature-length montage combining all sides and finding the horrific dark humour in all of them. It’s frequently hilarious and concludes with a touching and effective pathos. Don’t Look Up is about as subtle as a hurtling comet, but again! Why does it have to be anything but manic? This is a manic film for a manic time and who isn’t wanting to scream?

P.S. What the hell was Timothee Chalamet doing in this movie, or to be fair, I should say the character of Yule. Completely comes into the film at the wrong time only to make the running time really start to feel itself and offer no entertainment value or insight or anything really for that matter, all it gives us is one more star  

P.S.S. Also McKay, you can give the fair use clips a rest. Seeing a random fish was as helpful here to explain a comet crashing, as a random fish was to help convey the arc of Vice.

-         - Thomas Carruthers