Don’t Look Up (2021)
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Don’t Look Up Movie Review
Don’t Look Up is a 2021 satirical comedy film directed by Adam McKay and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence among many others in a star-studded cast. It’s such an underrated movie.
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“You guys, the truth is way more depressing.
They are not even smart enough to be
as evil as you’re giving them credit for“
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Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth. I have never been the biggest fan of Adam McKay and most of his movies I find very overrated, especially ‘Vice’ and ‘The Big Short’. I am once again in the minority and opposed to the critics as with Don’t Look Up, I am on the opposite side – I find it to be his best effort up until this point and certainly his most entertaining.
The film is probably a bit too direct and on-the-nose, but that kind of approach really works for a satirical comedy such as this one. Clearly standing as a metaphor for climate change and humanity’s denial on that issue, the movie rightfully puts the blame on all of us who do not take anything seriously. In particular, the portrayal of the media was fantastic. As the current pandemic has shown, people today have the tendency to instantly create opposing factions on a certain issue, separating everybody into groups instead of uniting them to fight together.
I loved this flick’s depiction of the US president. It was a very clever idea to lampoon many previous presidents by basically portraying her as the mixture between Trump, Obama and even Clinton. She is basically the worst parts of each of these figures rolled into one and Meryl Streep was delightful depicting all of those terrible qualities.
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Another standout is Leonardo DiCaprio. I am not a fan of his and he has taken a very long break after his Oscar win, but it’s undeniable that his performance here is quite strong. That monologue was definitely Oscar-baity as hell, but it worked in the context of the plot. Jennifer Lawrence is also terrific and her character is the most admirable of the bunch. How the two were perceived differently by the public and how social media twisted their words and created memes out of them was so believable.
Don’t Look Up clearly tries to emulate the disaster movies of the seventies with its star-studded cast with the only difference being its irreverent, comedic tone that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but is still thematically rich and important. Unfortunately, some of these actors definitely weren’t necessary for the movie with Timothee Chalamet particularly standing out as unimportant.
But Ariana Grande basically playing herself was amusing, Ron Perlman was absolutely hilarious with many of his racist lines being laugh-out-loud funny, Cate Blanchett was perfectly cast as this cold, calculated host and Mark Rylance impressed as this horrendous tech billionaire CEO. He looked different than usual and sounded very different, but he played the part superbly. This man is infuriating because we got many of them in our real world and the movie thankfully acknowledged how horrible they are for society.
Clearly the pacing and editing on the movie is all over the place, but it remained hugely entertaining to me from start to finish. The visuals worked, the dialogue was excellent and the humor is outstanding at times with one of the highlights being Jonah Hill as this obnoxious brat and the son of the president. The ending was another comedic delight.
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