Don't Look Up

Comedy often works best when you don't dwell on pain too much. That explains why Mel Brooks said that "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." You'll understand the relevance of that quote as I discuss Adam McKay's satire, Don't Look Up. 

Hopefully ...

PHD Candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) spots a comet with the Subaru Telescope. Her professor, Randall Mindy (Leonardo Dicaprio) calculates that it will smash into Earth in six months and two weeks. After that, goodbye to everything. There's just one problem: outside of the scientific community, nobody cares.

President Orlean (Meryl Streep) takes some interest in stopping the comet. But that goes out the window when evil rich man Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) tells her of the embarrassment of riches comprising the comet. Riches, need I remind you, are useless in a mass-extinction event. The baddies vilify Dibiasky and Mindy when they try to warn the public themselves. 

It's not so subtle about its messaging. It presents the general population as infuriating morons. Dibiasky and Mindy go on a morning show, whose anchors (Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett), try to sugarcoat the coming apocalypse. Dibiasky's understandable breakdown gets her mocked on social media. The baddies abort their first and best chance to save the world right after launch. Their plan to mine the comet is a spectacular disaster. Our heroes attempt to save the world repeatedly fall on deaf ears. Its 138-minute runtime drags out the looming dread too long.

Is there any ray of sunshine? A few of the skewed priority gags, including those surrounding a controversial Supreme Court pick (Erik Parillo), were funny. Ron Perlman's here as Benedict Drask, pilot of the aborted mission, and one of the few characters outside the heroes' inner circle I didn't wish death on. The inner circle includes Yule (Timothee Chalamet), a cool skater dude who starts dating Dibiasky. Nicholas Britell's score adds some appropriate gravitas to the story. But the biggest ray of sunshine is that, as the mid-credits show, the baddies' attempt to save themselves is also a disaster.

Mindy and Dibiasky are ultimately the most sympathetic characters here. Sure, they're surrounded by sheeple and their overlords, but they find the Earth worth saving (so does the movie, as its use of natural stock clips suggests). You'll feel their frustration as they're ignored, vilified or worse. Orlean and her doofus son, Jason (Jonah Hill), seem reasonable despite their self-centeredness. But they show their true colors when Isherwell enters the picture. He's quite a creepy villain despite being seemingly awkward. Perhaps the most prominent of the numerous bit characters are pop stars Riley Bina (Arianna Grande) and DJ Chello (Scott Mescudi), who ultimately perform the Oscar-shortlisted Just Look Up.

Don't Look Up is supposed to satirize the response to climate change. But I'd think the common man is more adept with dealing with that than a planet-killing comet. It's quite a depressing comedy when you think about it. Actually, the film wants you to know that the end of the world isn't fine. Did it make its point rather well? Too well? Or not at all? You can find out for itself if you see it on Netflix.