Review: Adam McKay Hits An All-time Low with ‘Don’t Look Up’
“I just want you to know this is the most repulsive thing that has ever happened to me.”
When a giant meteor hurtles towards Earth, two scientists (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) start raising the alarm to anyone who will listen. Thinking a matter of impending doom will cause global unified action, it comes to their surprise that no one, from morning show hosts to world leaders, seems to care at all. In the weeks that follow as the meteor approaches, increasingly farcical happenings emerge that expose the fraying seams of American society at every level and how social and political strife has gotten so bad that we can’t even save ourselves when certain doom is on our doorstep. The resulting “satire” is nothing more than a cynical wet dream for writer, director Adam McKay who thinks every facet of society is deserving of being wiped clean off the face of the Earth.
The main problem with Don’t Look Up is that it comes from a place of presumed authority. McKay makes quick work of political leaders who rightly deserve ridicule for their inability to muster any semblance of competence when a world ending crisis falls in their lap, but he also proceeds to cast his net wider and wider until he lambasts everyone for one reason or another, and not particularly well, either. Liberals, conservatives, the media, celebrities, and generally anyone McKay thinks is responsible for societal decline fall under his scope. Some of these targets genuinely warrant critique, but all too often the satire is coming from someone who has no moral compass at all, and wants to articulate just how much smarter he is for pointing it out.
In The Big Short and Vice, there were at least defined targets for McKay to criticize, and more importantly people who are harmed by the individuals and institutions he critiques. Here, it would appear that Trump-era politics has caused him to turn on everyone. No one is spared from McKay’s haphazard approach to comedy, punching both up and down the line in an effort to show how distorted society has become. This wholesale approach comes with some pretty irresponsible collateral damage that lacks any kind of neutralizing nuance, no kind of acknowledged tragedy to the chaos taking place at the hands of leaders, and certainly no carveouts for things worth saving or those on the ground trying to make things better. What is taking place is McKay casting stones left and right from his ivory tower, sincerely thinking everyone but him is stupid and that we all deserve to die for the society we’re apart of, which is a pretty grotesque and nihilistic message for a movie, even for a comedy.
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