domsdomain: ‘DON’T LOOK UP’ IS EASY TO AGREE WITH AND HARD TO JUSTIFY

By Dominique Paul Noth

Sickened by our politics? By our cavalier attitude toward climate change? By selfishness during an epidemic? The vapid chatter on TV news and social media? For those reasons and more you want to applaud director-writer Adam McKay for his angry three-endings take in Don’t Look Up, a title that invites pundit variations such as Don’t Look It Up or Just Don’t Look. It is exclusively on Netflix for now, and that is also a commentary on this star-studded film.

We the American public are the main target as we refuse to believe in the planet-killing comet speeding toward Earth (how the film opens). We are the complacent society of couch potatoes reluctant to even look up at the meteor filled sky. We let rich technology gurus, slimy politicians and those TV talking heads reduce major ideas into gotcha balloons or seek a way to make money off disaster. These privileged movers and shakers even think they can escape the Earth’s impending atmosphere of climate destruction.

After a promising opening premise, the film demonstrates that gathering a stellar cast for a needed assault doesn’t mount to diddly without tight writing, true humor and a good instinct of how to poke fun again and again without becoming boring. Something McKay was supposed to learn from his past at SNL, but then again today’s SNL is also hit and miss.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence

As the scientists alarmed at how society refuses to accept their facts about the killer comet, the movie relies on Leonardo DiCaprio (for too many panicked reaction takes) and Jennifer Lawrence (tricked up with nose earring and burnt red hair to look as ugly as possible for one of the most attractive creatures on screen). They become the anxious ragers against Establishment indifference and self-serving schemes.

Rallied against them are Meryl Streep as a female presidential version of Trump, Jonah Hill as her obnoxious son elevated to chief of staff, Cate Blanchett as a man-eating TV host devoted to making the important look trivial, and Tyler Perry as her co-host echo chamber. There are also in various stages of opposition Timothee Chalamet as the unpretentious but empty-headed love interest and an extra talented actor, Mark Rylance, who almost escapes criticism as the creepy technological guru (think Steve Jobs crossed with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos).

Look around if you don’t think this story has truths. The movie insists that we like sheep will heed the bigwigs’ commands to just step aside, keep our heads down and let the money boys operate. The film is a scream of anguish and a parable for our time – but it is a comedy? Or is comedy passé in our current gridlock?

McKay feels righteous outrage – so several of his films testify (“Vice,” “The Big Short”). But clever humor is still expected from him, and is sadly thin in a movie where bile rules and an understandable negative view of mankind wins.

Mark Rylance in 'Don't Look Up'

In a better film Rylance would receive accolades for his constant smile and spooky mannerisms, as would Streep for her ferocious portrayal of a soulless politician. In this film, people I never thought would be boring are.

It’s a strange thing to say about such collected first-rate talents. You can easily be misled into thinking it all can’t be a waste – the cast alone should put it at No. 1 on Netflix. Well it isn’t all a waste, not at first, but it comes damn close in two and a half hours. It’s understandable that many of the participants say in interviews that it was more like making a documentary than a satire. That may well be part of the problem.

We keep agreeing with McKay’s points and long for a reason to like this parade of very expensive special effects and useless diatribes, with constant intercuts to scenes of destroyed or threatened nature. He is trying to make the modern complicated equivalent of 1964’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” But director Stanley Kubrick and writer Terry Southern had a spine – a serious fiction novel “Red Alert” that struck them as hysterical to spin off, breaking themselves up with laughter. McKay has no such anchor, nor the talent to wing his way through this.

Hiring like-minded seriously talented people is desperation, not a substitute for wit and genuine ideas. That’s why the movie scrambles for finales – not just a stolen kiss between unlikely partners, not a meeting of the good folks for a final dinner, not just a surprise space ship voyaging into disaster.

A word about Netflix and this ever more common way of watching movies. The service signed some pretty big names for this movie to add to its seemingly bottomless mixed bag of exclusive offerings. I’m finding value in my Netflix subscription by ignoring the entry screens and daily emails where they push the products they think I would be interested in. I just push deeper to find my gems – like “Voir” (a collection of movie essays) or movies that will never strike it big but are worth a look like “Proof,” “Passing” and “Tick Tick Boom.”

The online services are doing with volume what the movie theaters have given up for now (though they may surge into variety again if COVID fears die off). The online services welcome blockbuster possibilities while also embracing slivers of audiences. This broad choice of venues has turned film critics into openly being what they secretly always were – consumer advisers showing you where and when.

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