About the film (courtesy of Netflix):
Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem — it’s on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a planet-killer the size of Mount Everest is an inconvenient fact to navigate. With the help of Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). With only six months until the comet makes impact, managing the 24-hour news cycle and gaining the attention of the social media obsessed public before it’s too late proves shockingly comical — what will it take to get the world to just look up?!
Writer/director Adam McKay has seemingly transitioned away from outright fictional comedies like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) and Step Brothers (2008) to a more understated brand of comedy that’s both funny and disturbing because the stories happen to be true, such as The Big Short (2015) and Vice (2018). The appeal to McKay’s newer projects are that these plots are based on very recent events. They haven’t been out of the news cycle for THAT long where you’d totally have forgotten when these topics were actually “just” news. This time around, McKay has slightly altered his approach by bringing forth a story that’s fictional, but frighteningly plausible. Thank goodness we already know that he’s going to keep it light in the process.
Don’t Look Up probably has the most talented cast, top to bottom, that Adam McKay has ever worked with. At the very least, the names and their collective bodies of work are something to be marveled. Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rob Morgan, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Mark Rylance, Michael Chiklis, Himesh Patel — now that’s and amazing cast to be associated with one movie. The better part to this is that not one of these names mentioned are just present for a paycheck. Each and everyone brings some sort of joy to their performances. Adam McKay: Master Motivator.
How would the world react if it was brought to our attention that Earth is facing an extinction level event? Denial, chaos, acceptance, fear, anger are all levels of emotions and feeling that would most likely surface. Don’t Look Up pretty much touches on all of these albeit in an entertaining way. This movie is entertaining as well as a reminder of how close we are as a human race to experiencing this some day. Thankfully there’s lots and LOTS of light-hearted laughable moments along the way. Speaking of, make sure you stay through all of the credits.
The runtime is just under two and a half hours. There are so many actors, so many moving parts and so much to cover that the time passes relatively briskly. The fact that this well-written and well-acted makes the time invested feel like a treat rather than a chore. I’d recommend seeing this in theaters, not because of epic visuals, sounds or any of the sort. I just think it’s a more enjoyable experience when fun like this is shared with others in a group setting so you can feed off of one another. Don’t Look Up opens in theaters Friday and then it’ll be available for streaming to subscribers of Netflix starting December 24.
