'Don't Look Up' is the new 'Idiocracy' we deserve
Netflix
There’s a classic moment in 2007’s “The Simpsons Movie”: Terrified about the expectation that their town will be destroyed by a bomb, all the people from the church run into Moe’s Tavern, and everyone from the bar runs into the place of worship. The idea of societal annihilation is, quite obviously, a big deal, and the concept of how to handle it is anything but easy.
Especially in 2021 America. “Don’t Look Up” is sort of like writer-director Adam McKay’s (“Anchorman,” “The Big Short”) update of the “Simpsons” episode “Bart’s Comet,” or “Armageddon” through the eyes of Mike Judge (“Idiocracy”). The plot is simple: A Mount Everest-sized comet will collide with the Earth in six months. Definitely. Science knows this, and a veteran astronomer (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a PhD candidate (Jennifer Lawrence), the latter having discovered the deadly forecast, want to inform the public. The problem, and McKay’s frustrated, scared reason for making the movie, is how badly equipped we are to solve major crises. It could be climate change, school violence, a pandemic, or otherwise. There’s so much anti-intellectualism and whataboutism and detachment from reality – driven, McKay argues, by a fear-based filtering of information that prioritizes “sexy” over “important,” from needing clever nicknames for astronomers to elevating celebrity gossip above world-altering news – that if a comet were approaching to end all civilization, does anyone really think the result would be unity and progress toward a logical countermeasure for the good of all?
By the way, this is a comedy with several parts that aren’t funny, often deliberately so. It’s also a horror film about substance being smothered by fluff instead of coexisting in healthy moderation. Sometimes tonally jagged is OK. Sharp and broad. Awkward and devastating.
While it would have been easy for “Don’t Look Up” to feel vapid and stale like an “SNL” political cold open or McKay’s shockingly bad “Vice,” it’s not. Merging anger and sadness, the movie tries to reckon with problems that don’t solve themselves and what to do when the money, power and influence that should take charge of situations often make things harder. (Mark Rylance plays a wealthy, foolish tech mogul whose phones aim to deliver life “without the stress of living.”) If you can’t call out danger without sounding alarmist, how do you actually sound an alarm?
On top of that very heavy question, “Don’t Look Up” goes for laughs and usually gets them. Part of the success comes from inspired casting; it’s a very welcome change to see DiCaprio as a man with no charisma and Meryl Streep (playing a president nowhere near as dumb or cruel as he who shall not be named but still far worse than is needed for a functioning society) as a loathsome idiot. And Lawrence showcases her deft ability at both comedy and drama in a role that involves exasperation and terror but also repeated bafflement at someone charging her for an item that was actually free.
Can’t quite say the same about Jonah Hill, who’s fittingly obnoxious but mostly just irritating as the president’s son/Chief of Staff, in an example of McKay’s topicality that is sadly too true and obvious to be funny. But it’s not too true to matter in a dramatic sense: "Don’t Look Up” is about the deadly consequences of denying facts or simply having no idea how to process and communicate them, from a media standpoint or just between two individuals. (Sheesh, think of what’s changed since 2011’s “Melancholia.”) We have to be able to look at something and agree it’s there, one character screams at one point. Otherwise, what are we even doing?
That’s not a point that hasn’t been made before, and it’s not like there are new notions here about what people might do with their last moments. But there’s something deceptively big and complicated about considering the human capacity to (not) address the largest challenges to their own survival as certain systems prevent action being taken — and people’s ability to recognize that a happy ending isn’t automatic but could be possible with thought and work. There’s such tragedy in the idea of, among many other things, being stuck in a loop of distraction at the expense of progress. Perpetual escapism that prevents escape, with what we’re looking away from and how continually being updated in the stories on the subject.
Toward the beginning McKay includes a quote from comedy writer and former “SNL” reference point Jack Handey: “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers.” It’s a clever, funny, upsetting way to wonder about accountability for the driver of a deadly vessel who doesn’t care and if there’s anything the people who aren’t behind the wheel can and will do. Landing much, much closer to “The Big Short” than to “Vice,” the filmmaker looks at America and what it would take to bail out from destruction — and if legitimate fear could rise above the noise before it’s too late.
B+
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