Is it a satire if it talks a lot, but doesn’t say much?

There’s a lot to say about the US’s response to the climate crisis and its lionisation of tech bros. Don’t Look Up takes aim at so many things, and misses most of them. At times, the film is as wacky, angry, and scary as it intends to be. Some of its ideas (such as the reason the US response to the film’s own existential threat suddenly, literally, U-turns) are even inspired. But like the botched space missions in the story, the film is frequently off-target in ways that are miscalculated, careless, and even reckless, given the unique opportunity that a movie with such a stellar cast has for its urgent message to reach a wider audience.

The film’s ambitious (in theory, at least) aspirations are matched by its esteemed cast. There’s “and Meryl Streep” playing the President, Jennifer Lawrence in her first movie in years, and a Wolf of Wall Street reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. Timothée Chalamet is perfect as an emblematically nihilistic (but secretly sweet) teen, and Mark Rylance is positively alien as a Bezos / Jobs / musk / Zuckerberg type… though that character is a near-miss of an opportunity in itself. Many of the characterisations start off interestingly only to fall apart, but the performance which manages that is given by Leo, who starts at 8, and dials it up to 13. I get that his character is supposed to be tight-wound before things begin to really spiral, but he leaves himself nowhere to go but distracting.

Among its aspirations, Don’t Look Up seems to also want to be Network (1976) for the climate change internet age – and its own premise holds it back.

The Don’t Look Up problem begins with its choice of a comet as a stand-in for climate change.

Unlike its real-world analog, Don’t Look Up‘s comet is a single, measurable object, whose cause-and-effect can be clearly traced, and for which humankind is almost certainly not at all responsible. This limits the kinds of ramifications that can then be explored, which then leads to some really unhelpfully silly moments which cynically eat themselves all the way around to being harmfully idealistic. For example: by the film’s end, MAGA types turn on their Trumpian overlords because they see objective truth with their own eyes – a misrepresentation of how cults function generally, of how classism and racism power America culturally, and of the ways fear and anger are cultivated and weaponised, and crucially by whom. Conspicuously: of the myriad targets in the film’s crosshairs, social media is not one of them. It’s not merely that many of the ideas in the film are too neat, or offer no commentary with their bite;

Don’t Look Up belies the insidious, complicated, and apocalyptic nature and function of techno feudalism, conservative evangelism, and disinformation.

A microcosm of the Don’t Look Up problem can be found in the Chris Evans “as a country, we need to stop arguing” cameo. In real life, the beloved Captain America star leveraged his superhuman celebrity magnanimity to launch an interview series which literally ‘both sides’ed American political figures, even as the country’s Republican party was devolving into an authoritarian disinformation grift, and its Democratic party has since proven ineffectual at (and arguably largely unconcerned with) substantive correction. Does Don’t Look Up understand the potential harm of purported liberals failing to hold systemic saboteurs to account? It’s not clear if Evans, or the film, is aware that a roast isn’t commentary – and in satire, the latter is kinda crucial.

Emblematic of the film’s sloppiness: the camera work, the shot selection… why? Many shots look like the action caught the operator by surprise, others lack any kind of subtlety, and others still feel like they’re allowed to play beyond the point where they should be cut away from. It’s an oddly apt… metaphor for? symptom of? the film overall.

Co-writer and director Adam McKay‘s previous films shot their own ambitious shots better. The Big Short (2015), about the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis in the US in the first decade of this millennium, is similarly sprawling and far more experimental. Vice (2018) has all the cynicism it needs within its villainous protagonist, Dick Cheney, which allows – or necessitates – a bit more nuance in the film’s exploration of villainy itself. Both The Big Short and Vice manage to come together in ways Don’t Look Up does not, perhaps because their respective examinations of cause-and-effect aren’t diluted by allegory – or perhaps because they’re just better written. Don’t Look Up talks a lot, but what is it actually saying?

Further Viewing

Climate change “is a diffuse [and] slow-moving threat”, with environmental effects “that people don’t necessarily directly connect to climate change”. Pop Culture Happy Hour identifies, and digs deeper into, many of the off-target shots taken in Don’t Look Up (via NPR):