Don't Look Up (2021)

[Winston T. Boogie]

Title: Don't Look Up (2021)

Tagline: The stars get struck.

Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction, Drama

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, Ariana Grande, Himesh Patel, Ron Perlman, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Rob Morgan, Kid Cudi, Tomer Sisley, Melanie Lynskey, Ashleigh Banfield, Michael Chiklis, Gina Gershon, Paul Guilfoyle, Meghan Leathers, Ross Partridge, Frank Ridley, Tamara Hickey, Matthew Perry, Chris Evans

Release: 2021-12-10

Runtime: 145

Plot: Two low-level astronomers, upon discovering that a meteor will strike the Earth in six months, go on a media tour to try to warn the world but find an unreceptive and unbelieving populace.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

So first thing is the WOW cast obviously, and then we have a sort of funny, timely plot about modern anxieties. Two guys trying to warn people the world is in danger and the world just yawns and goes back to staring at their phone.

It's nearly two and a half hours long which makes it kind of epic for a comedy. Looks fantastic!

 

[Keith Cobby]

I can't accept the premise that only they would know (or is it a government conspiracy). But it's free so can give it 10 minutes to see if it grabs me.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I can't accept the premise that only they would know (or is it a government conspiracy). But it's free so can give it 10 minutes to see if it grabs me.

Ha, it is often hard to accept the premise of our current reality but unfortunately I can't turn it off after 10 minutes.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Also there actually was a massive meteor that passed ridiculously close to our planet recently and practically nothing was said about it. Had it hit us, well, that would have probably been the end of this weird little experiment in humanity but I think it missed us by about 30.000 miles...which sounds like a lot but in galactic terms that's like you missing the other car in the grocery parking lot by an inch.

Our government these days seems like the least likely people to warn us about our impending doom...they would probably argue about it for 6 months and seconds before we were all dead tell us, there seems to be some sort of problem.

 

[Malcolm R]

Our government these days seems like the least likely people to warn us about our impending doom

What would be the point? So people can run out and buy toilet paper?

If our doom is imminent, I'd rather not know until it happens.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

What would be the point? So people can run out and buy toilet paper?

If our doom is imminent, I'd rather not know until it happens.

The truth is if we were all going to be killed by a meteor people would need a lot of toilet paper leading up to the event. At least the ones that believed it and were not angrily complaining it was all a government hoax.

 

[Wayne_j]

I saw this on Sunday. One of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. Definitely not for those sensitive about politics.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Available on Dec 24th on Netflix here in the North, perfect Christmas movie with my family, coming home after a traditional Swedish Christmas smorgadsbord.
Can't wait.

 

[benbess]

I liked this movie quite a bit. But it won't be for all tastes. My rating: B+

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

If a picture ever suffered from bad timing, well, this is it. The thing people should know about this picture is it was written before the pandemic. So, while so much of this story seems a dead-on satire of what happened to us during the pandemic...the truth is the disaster the story was really supposed to be riffing off of was climate change.

Instead, coming out now as we have lived through both the pandemic and the Trump presidency (Meryl Streep plays a female version of Trump with Jonah Hill playing her idiotic offspring that has been given a job in the White House) it seems more a parody of Trump and the pandemic.

Here's the big problem with that when you watch the picture...it kills the humor entirely. Instead of seeming like a satire it just seems a dead on take of all the crap we have lived through, and I think a lot of people won't find that funny.

I mean I laughed a bit but after a while it just became sort of sad to watch. Basically, it was like watching someone that is not very funny try to crack jokes about what we have all been through. Plus watching it just kind of makes you think about all the stuff we've been through...which was fairly unpleasant.

Watching a pair of honest scientists get steamrolled by a greedy moronic president and her stupid offspring was as fun as watching Tony Fauci get that treatment in real life...meaning no fun at all. If this picture had come out before the pandemic it would probably now be seen as brilliantly predicting the future. Instead it plays like a horrible instant replay.

Combine this with the fact that most of the big name cast here is totally wasted. DiCaprio is good but Lawrence does not get a lot to do. Cate Blanchett's role is mostly a throwaway. Timothee Chalamet's part should have been cut. It bogs down the film and does nothing to help the story along and this picture is ridiculously long at almost 2 hours and 20 minutes. You do have to watch the entire running time because there are gags during the credits and after the credits are over. Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi get a huge concert set piece where they sing a song and it stops the movie dead. It's not really funny and it mostly lies there totally flat. They also should have been cut as about the only thing they are in the film for is to make a joke about celebrity culture which the picture does not need.

We get Ron Perlman in a bit part basically playing Ron Perlman as a nutty military guy that makes inappropriate comments. Most of these jokes land with a thud because they mostly only seem to be there to stretch the running time.

Streep as the female Trump also just falls flat as she is neither as weird, nor as stupid, nor as wacky as the actual Donald Trump. I mean you can't try to satirize a guy by doing stuff that is not as horrific as the stuff the actual guy did. That just plays as lame. It would have been funny to have Streep tear into something like this but she coasts through it and really is wasted. Hill gets some funny lines as her stupid son but again...real life trumps what we get in this film.

I love satire but this one is tone deaf. I wanted to like this and went in excited to see it but in the end I found it too long and that it sort of pales in comparison to how weird real life got during this pandemic.

I mean science deniers, a greedy stupid president that holds rallies to distract and fill her followers heads with pure garbage...yeah, it probably would be funny if we could say "Yeah, that would never happen." but when we've had to see it happen over and over again...well...I found myself staring at the screen in silence.

 

[Matt Hough]

I did not enjoy it. The satire was heavy handed to the point of oppression, and all of the greed and corruption was positively depressing to me. The cast is wonderful doing all they can to make this black comedy work, but the film just pushed its (justified) agenda much too aggressively for me.

 

[TravisR]

The last two posts have actually made me want to see this more. Comedy is very subjective but I love Adam McKay and I see no limits for pointing out the absolute horrors that this movie apparently goes after.

 

[John Sparks]

Well, I bought the movie for 99 cents. Turned out it was the wrong flick, it was about an alien invasion…oh well.

 

[cinemel1]

The best part was

Spoiler

Meryl Streep’s landing on another planet 22,000 years later.

She’s just as entitled there as her role in the film and Streep’s persona in real life. She deserves what she gets!

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I did not enjoy it. The satire was heavy handed to the point of oppression, and all of the greed and corruption was positively depressing to me. The cast is wonderful doing all they can to make this black comedy work, but the film just pushed its (justified) agenda much too aggressively for me.

I kind of want to find out if this picture was influenced by the pandemic and how it was dealt with. It certainly feels like it is totally influenced by the pandemic as even the way the country splits into two groups, those following the science (Just look up!) and those denying the science and reality (Don't look up!) seem like they are riffing on how the pandemic was handled. However, the first few things I read claim this was all conceived prior to the pandemic and is about climate change and climate change deniers.

OK, they do have a lot of insert clips of animals and the environment which clearly suggest climate change but watching the picture now makes it seem like it is all about the pandemic. I don't know how they intended the satire but I think the problem is after living through all this insanity I don't think we can watch the film any way except as a pandemic parody.

This makes the satire seem and feel heavy handed but if we saw this picture pre-pandemic I think it would have felt and played much differently.

i don't think it is beautifully written satire as a lot of what it gets into we've likely seen done better. The media parodies are just either totally dead on (Michael Chiklis as a Fox news propaganda man) or just kind of silly and empty (Blanchett and Tyler Perry as super perky upbeat morning show hosts). This is not great stuff and just shows them making very obvious jokes about really low hanging fruit.

The cast does what they can to invest some life into this stuff but it never gets off the ground. DiCaprio digs in and plays his part mostly straight. The situations and other characters around him are what is supposed to make him funny...but it just does not get there.

Characters like the Mark Rylance tech billionaire that seems to verge on being a total moron and actually runs the country are just not funny. His part is poorly written and as a result his performance kind of stinks. Rylance is a good actor but if he is supposed to be the Dr. Strangelove in this scenario it is really poorly done.

The only joy here is watching the big cast try and make more of this than is there. Sometimes watching good actors in a bad film can be entertaining. I will say the first hour of the picture is really the best part of it. After that first hour the whole thing really tanks and throws in useless characters and useless subplots that keep stopping the film dead and it meanders to a very predictable conclusion.

And yes, watching this probably can cause depression because it just keeps throwing at you how stupid has ruled the day through our troubles and you wish this was comedy but really as we hurtle toward a million US citizens dead of Covid you sit there thinking, "Nope, it's no joke."

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

The last two posts have actually made me want to see this more. Comedy is very subjective but I love Adam McKay and I see no limits for pointing out the absolute horrors that this movie apparently goes after.

It all sounds funny on paper, which is probably why all these people wanted to be in it. The problem is in execution and that if you have a dark sense of humor just turning on the actual news is more insane/amusing than this.

I was pumped to see it because I love satire and really they don't want to make satirical pictures anymore because they are too afraid the audience won't get them. Really, that sort of seems in play here as instead of going full bore on cutting satire they make the most obvious jokes you could make...presumably to make sure the audience understands them. So, you could call this "Satire for dummies."

Its worth a watch just because of the cast but wow the last hour and 20 minutes just was really poorly thought out. In some ways I feel like what the film was really assembled for was to put a bunch of famous people in these parts but the parts don't add up to a cohesive whole. Timothee Chalamet and his subplot serve absolutely no purpose in the picture. Showing DiCaprio's family life adds nothing. The big concert with Grande and Cudi adds nothing. Perry and Blanchett as morning show hosts are a one note joke and the picture keeps coming back to them telling us the same damn joke over and over. First Lawrence reacts to it and then DiCaprio does the same reaction to it. It's another dead end.

I mean watch it and see what you think but this picture really needed someone to edit it down. There are not enough laughs here to sustain the 2 hour and 20 minute running time and that running time includes having to watch all the way to the end of the credits for the final gag. My guess is one watch will do you just fine.

 

[TravisR]

I mean watch it and see what you think but this picture really needed someone to edit it down. There are not enough laughs here to sustain the 2 hour and 20 minute running time and that running time includes having to watch all the way to the end of the credits for the final gag. My guess is one watch will do you just fine.

There's a few exceptions in my mind but I'm of the John Waters school that says a comedy should be 90 minutes so I know it's going to be too long from the jump. Unfortunately, I can say that about almost every movie made now. Even the ones I like.

 

[ChristopherG]

Wanted to like it. Didn’t.

 

[Bernard McNair]

I love good satire- this film contained almost none.
In my opinion a waste of remarkable talent and the chance to tell a salient story squandered.
Pity.