Film Review: “Don’t Look Up”
Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” goals to be a cheeky satire that factors a finger at capitalist greed within the period of false information, however flat jokes and an amazing forged severely undermines the movie’s mojo.
“Don’t Look Up” is a Netflix film that units out to bottle the chaos and confusion that we’re all dwelling via proper now: the result’s a discordant and confused movie that does an excellent job at capturing the distinctive mix of exhaustion and anger that we’ve been lugging round for the previous few years. World-ending occasions have simply been coming and going, and we’ve change into desensitized. It’s bodily unattainable for us to change into extra anxious — we’ve got to show off the anxiousness and revel in our lives in some way. These themes are echoed within the premise of the movie; “Don’t Look Up” stars Leonardo DiCaprio as astronomy professor Randall Mindy and Jennifer Lawrence as PhD pupil Kate Dibiasky who uncover {that a} large comet is headed straight in direction of Earth. When the 2 got down to share their findings with most people, havoc is unleashed.
The film rests on the shoulders of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, however Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Ariana Grande, Timothee Chalamet, and Cate Blanchett are simply a number of the different names that make an look. Past the core forged although, everybody else’s look feels compelled, and it actually doesn’t really feel just like the characters are coming collectively and even including something to the story. The curler coaster of feelings additionally makes it actually troublesome to attach with any of the characters; all of them appear to veer from one excessive to a different. Jennifer Lawrence’s character specifically swings between apathy and anger with alarming frequency. She handles an impending apocalypse with grace, however slips right into a depressive episode when her boyfriend breaks up along with her. To be clear, there’s nothing significantly mistaken with this; the film simply doesn’t take the time to completely discover the character’s improvement, leaving the viewers with a way of whiplash and an incomplete image of who Kate Dibiasky is. Every character goes via their very own experiences, however in making an attempt to seize all of their tales, the film is unable to create a compelling narrative and finally ends up bouncing wildly. The result’s a type of cacophony reasonably than the concord we’ve come to count on; the story flares up, then mellows down all of a sudden; the highs and lows come and go, by no means fairly letting you compromise in. The film’s enhancing additionally feels discordant and frantic, switching from languid, lingering pictures to tough, panicked scenes.
The themes of “Don’t Look Up” echo these of “Wall-E” or “2012,” with further makes an attempt to deliver a touch of comedy and satire to the combination. The problem is that the movie is simply … not humorous. There’s a little bit of situational irony right here and there, and the bizarreness would possibly shock fun out of you, however many of the jokes don’t land. For instance, there’s a scene the place Meryl Streep addresses the nation within the face of an apocalypse, however spends most of her speech leaning into nationalistic ideology and exits right into a bathe of fireworks. Whereas it’s insane, it pales compared to the truth that we live via, making for very ineffective satire. Juxtaposing superstar relationship information with doomsday information simply isn’t that humorous in 2021 as a result of we’ve lived via it. The political commentary is blatantly on the nostril and the movie begins to pull in a short time, particularly with a runtime of two hours and 20 minutes. Regardless of its lofty objectives, or maybe resulting from them, “Don’t Look Up” finally ends up feeling frenzied and chaotic and fails to deliver something new to the desk.
Grade: C
Directed by: Adam McKay
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence
Launch Date: December 24, 2021
Rated: R
Picture courtesy of ComicBook.com.
