My Review (w/spoilers) of Adam McKay's DON'T LOOK UP

It is interesting to look at the trajectory of Adam McKay's career and how he has managed to reinvent himself.

25 years ago, McKay was hired by Lorne Michaels to be his new headwriter for SNL at one of the worst times in the show's history...and his contributions helped save the show. His first season as headwriter ended up being one of the best in SNL history: 1995-1996, which was the first season of such cast members as Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, and Cheri Oteri. 

Following his SNL departure, he teamed up with Will Ferrell (with whom he wrote some truly classic sketches on SNL such as "Wake Up & Smile" or "Bill Brasky") and made some of the more prominent comedies of the 2000s such as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers.

Then...he decided to take a little detour.

In 2015, he achieved critical acclaim and awards attention for his semi-comedic look at the 2008 Financial Crisis entitled The Big Short. However, right off the bat, the film did seem to divide people who didn't take to its cynical and humorous tone. I actually was part of the group who responded highly to the film, even to the point where I actually wanted it to win the Oscar for Best Picture at the time.

In 2018, he made Vice, a movie that took a less than serious approach at telling the story of one of the worst people to ever hold the office of Vice President, Dick Cheney. Once again, acclaim and award nominations were sent McKay's way, but the film seemed even more divisive with critics and audiences alike. I probably liked that film more than hated it, but I can't say I was overly enamored with it.

I wasn't sure what to expect with Don't Look Up other than it was probably going to divide people. Perhaps what did surprise me was how sharp the divide seems to be. 

While these scores aren't always the best gauge, Don't Look Up currently has the following:

Rotten Tomatoes Critics: 55% (which is considered a rotten score)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 77%

Metacritic: 50%

Letterboxd: 3.2/5

So yes, Don't Look Up has divided people more harshly than any of McKay's "serious comedies" to date...and where do I fall on that spectrum?

I am right in the middle.

Don't Look Up is essentially a film that acts as a mirror to society, particularly how portions of the country are willfully ignoring everything from COVID to Climate Change. When a PhD candidate named Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) makes a discovery of a previously unknown object that is approaching Earth, her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) calculates that it will hit Earth in just over 6 months and cause extinction.

From there, they are tasked to warn the President of the United States, Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) who is basically the female Trump all the way down to having a child, in this case her son Jason (Jonah Hill) working in her administration. As one might expect, they don't seem overly concerned about the apocalypse until they realize they can spin it for their own benefit to avoid a scandal.

Before I discuss further plot details and the performances, I want to discuss McKay's direction and screenplay as I feel like this is where most of my issues lie.

The movie has about as much subtlety as a sledgehammer to your face...and one might argue that it needed to be as such. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand how frustrating it is to listen to the complete and utter nonsense and ignorance from the Right. Instead, I sort of felt like a lot of the film came off as smug and that it thought it was being cleverer than it actually was.

This is further exacerbated by the run-time as I feel like McKay could have had his editing team trim about 20-25 minutes off the film to make it run more smoothly. 

Performance wise, DiCaprio and Lawrence do quite well with what they were given, and I especially loved Cate Blanchett as Brie Evantee, the co-host of a morning show called The Daily Rip who ends up having an affair with DiCaprio (it took me a second to recall that this was an Aviator reunion). 

Lawrence, in particular, gets a runner in the film that is so random but hilarious that I actually might consider it my favorite part of the movie. Very early on, Lawrence is sitting at the White House with DiCaprio and they are there with Dr. Teddy Oglethrope (Rob Morgan) and a Pentagon General who offers to go grab snacks and water for the group. Upon his return, he moans about how pricey the kitchen is to which DiCaprio and Morgan give the General money for his purchases...only later to realize that the kitchen supplies are free. This sends Lawrence's Diabisky into a bit of a tail-spin and she will bring it up to people at random times throughout the movie. It offers nothing directly to the plot and yet it was perhaps my favorite thing about it because it seemed like the kind of theme that McKay would've written an SNL sketch about.

The film does manage to find sturdy footing by the time it reaches its final moments. When it is obvious that doom is inevitable, people rush to be with their families or, in the case of Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry (who plays her co-host on The Daily Rip, they drink their sorrows away in an empty bar. 

McKay manages to find a slight bit of intrigue in the small role of Yule played by Timothee Chalamet. Yule is something of an outsider who admits to having been raised an Evangelical Christian. While he looks down on his religious upbringing, he tells Diabisky that he found a way to work around it and maintain some form of faith. 

I was also raised in an Evangelical environment, and I struggle quite a bit with how that world made me feel. However, there was a certain comfort to seeing Chalamet's character turn to faith in his final moments. When he says a prayer at the table surrounded by DiCaprio, Lawrence, Morgan, and Melanie Lynskey (playing DiCaprio's wife June), it brings a levity to the film that was much needed and then once we realize that the destruction is about to hit the house, I actually got a bit of a chill when their actions freeze but we see the water about to burst in from every angle.

As a whole, Don't Look Up was a film that was not a slog to sit through by any means, but it was a little too long and the first half got a bit exhausting with its brash tone. The final third is where the film really began to shine, and we also had a pretty solid ensemble of actors to see us through.

RATING: 3.5/5