Don't Look Up: The End is Here

(Chase Manze)

Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is about to appear on television for the first time. The show, The Daily Rip, boasts two sparkling anchors (Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry) and a sleek red set with an elongated glass table stretched across the center. Kate sits at the far end, removed from the anchors and effectively behind her boss, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo Dicaprio). Their appearance on the show is singular in its purpose: Kate's discovered a comet set to destroy Earth in a matter of months. After meeting with the President, it's become clear that the status quo remains unchanged and they need to leak the story themselves. Just before the cameras roll, Mindy endures private panic attacks and Kate projects a kind of physical rigidity clearly derived from anxiety and anticipation. At the desk, she twiddles her thumbs and occasionally darts her eyes from place to place, taking in each new horror one by one. The show begins and the camera cuts from wide shots of Blanchett and Perry bantering to sharp close-ups on Kate's face, emphasizing her quiet agony and black cat-eye makeup.

As the conversation between Mindy and the anchors revs up and strays into what should be solemn subject matter, Kate sits largely sidelined as she silently micro-reacts to what's going on around her: uninformed entities (anchors) making light of what she knows to be a devastating situation. Interrupting, with her head tilted down and her palms on the table, she leans forward and says, "I'm sorry, are we not being clear?" Her hand jumps to her chest, she pleads, between labored breaths, "We're trying to tell you the entire planet is about to be destroyed." Blanchett rebuts—"we keep the news light"—and gently motions to an off-screen producer that they should wrap the segment. With one final push, Kate answers: "Maybe the destruction of the entire planet isn't meant to be fun […] maybe it's supposed to be terrifying […] and you should stay up all night, every night, crying, when we're all, for sure, 100% gonna fucking die."

It's not subtle. In fact, nothing in Adam McKay's climate change "satire" Don't Look Up is. The film is a loose concoction of tedious, obvious scenes, all harping on the same idea, the same note, ad nauseam. By the time you reach the end of its near two-and-a-half-hour runtime, you'll have thought to yourself, "Huh, climate change is scary and our leaders will fail to address it" roughly 500 times. Other than that, you likely won't think at all. The film purports to make meaningful observations on the state of modern media, our current political climate, cultural passivity, and the disinformation age. It doesn't. It serves the audience a single, enormous steak, well-done to the point of being burnt, and an abundance of sides, all of which are missing crucial ingredients. 

Don't Look Up boasts an extreme cast of instantly-recognizable names and faces ranging from Meryl Streep (President Orlean) to Jonah Hill (her son and Chief of Staff) to Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi (in a pair of baffling roles). Everyone involved tries admirably to imbue McKay's one-to-two-dimensional characters with depth or nuance. Close, but no cigar. Walking away from the film, it's hard to recall anything about the aforementioned characters other than the general idea they're meant to mock.

Despite the proclaimed notions of this being a fiercely political satire akin to Dr. Strangelove, it's easy to go through all of Don't Look Up without once cracking a smile. Somewhere in his quest to make this capital-I "Important" movie, McKay lost track of those elements that've made him so successful in the past. Most notably: his films being engaging, propulsive, informative, and funny. 

Unlike Vice or The Big Short (two movies I adore), Don't Look Up takes place in a fictional world. For a brief shining moment at the beginning of the film, McKay tricks you into thinking that this will be another breakdown of real-world systems of bureaucracy and incompetence. As news of the comet spreads, Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) steps up. He's introduced as a representative from the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. McKay stops the film, puts text on the screen saying that that office is, in fact, real, and shows its logo (a man on a castle looking at stars through a telescope). This moment appears, amuses, and then disappears. There's never another moment like it; there's never another reference to the world we live in.

What is an Adam McKay "drama" without those real-world references? Without real people living through real situations? Without the constant flow of information to the viewer via various hyper-stylized (yet effective) methods? Answer: a dull, uninformed movie whose spastic, kinetic style feels wholly incongruous with the inert nature of the narrative itself. Removed from his rolodex of clever maneuvers (i.e., cameos, breaking the fourth wall, VO, elaborate graphics), McKay is forced to build entirely around dialogue. One wouldn't assume this to be an issue for an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, but it is. In retrospect, it's clear how much research McKay and his past collaborators have done to capture the speech and content of characters like Dick Cheney and Steve Eisman. Each of those figures (and the multitude of individuals surrounding them) felt lived in and were able to remark upon a great number of complex matters. They were always articulate and presented a sharp perspective. Despite the aesthetic opulence of Vice and Big Short, they were fueled primarily by deeply complicated people engaging with juicy subject matter.

In contrast, the characters in Don't Look Up are almost purposefully boring, as though their internal lives are utterly insignificant in the shadow of the comet. Kate Dibiasky only ever exists at one of two poles: expressionless and cold or utterly overwhelmed and hysterical. The depth of her relationship with Dr. Mindy, her level of experience with the science being discussed, and any aspect of her life that occurred prior to this story are all left profoundly unclear. She's given brief scenes with her parents that serve no real purpose outside of plot development. McKay writes her into a pseudo-love story with Timothee Chalamet's aimless evangelical skateboard pseudo-punk, Yule. Despite that list of multi-syllabic adjectives, Yule is also boring. In a recent interview with the LA Times, McKay said that he "wrote the role of Kate Dibiasky for [Jen] Lawrence." If true, this feels deeply insulting. As a character, Kate requires virtually no dexterity from the actor playing her. After the 45-minute mark, she's mainly just present. It feels odd to watch the second-youngest woman to ever win Best Actress sit, stand, and lay down, largely unengaged and with little defined motivation. Doubly so to watch it and then read that the role was made for her.

The satellite A-listers receive the same treatment. Ariana Grande (as Riley Bina) and Kid Cudi (as DJ Chello) play characters so ill-conceived their very inclusion feels like parody. They act out an over-the-top celebrity romance narrative in tiny increments. It's clear when watching it that McKay feels he's making a biting comment about our general cultural obsession with celebrities. He's not. He depicts the Bina/DJ Chello story as a distraction taking away from initial news of the comet. Once the comet is acknowledged by the government, the celebrity angle disappears entirely and Bina/Chello are never heard from again until a late musical number that felt ripped from another planet, let alone another movie. Similarly, McKay makes early claims about the media's role in suppressing important stories. These claims range from scenes like the television interview referenced earlier on to meetings in the office of a transparent New York Times analogue. Like the celebrities, the media angle gets dropped along the way.

McKay is mad about many, many things. This much is clear. He was mad about the 2008 financial crisis when he wrote The Big Short and was mad about the Bush Administration when he wrote Vice. Unfortunately for him (and for us) it seems as though he's tried to funnel his multitude of other angers into a single film: this one.  McKay populates Don't Look Up with so many ideas that, even after 145 minutes, it still feels deeply unsatisfying and intellectually incomplete. Beyond just ideas regarding climate change, celebrity, and our current media landscape, McKay sinks his teeth into government, big tech, and the ruling elite.

Streep's President Orlean is Donald Trump. Every exaggerated "joke" made about her persona is ripped verbatim from Trump's own tendencies and tenure as President. In practice, it's a played-out take that wastes Streep's malicious, charming brand of disregard (think The Devil Wears Prada). McKay's critique of her is largely toothless, though, as the American government creates a solution to the comet problem roughly halfway through the film. From there, he passes off his anger baton to the opportunistic big tech moguls that lobby politicians and ultimately make decisions on all our behalf. Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) is the CEO of a company called BASH, seemingly a combination of Apple (they produce cellphones that take in endless information about the user) and Tesla/SpaceX. Rylance gives the one great performance in the movie as a white-haired half-human Elon Musk type who speaks in the static high-pitched register of a deeply-relaxed child. He's a bizzaro-world Mr. Rogers with his hands on the wheel of all human endeavor, utterly arresting and controlling despite never raising his voice far beyond a whisper. BASH steps in after the initial abandoned comet mission, hoping to mine it for its trillions of dollars worth of natural resources before destroying it with unmanned spacecrafts. I don't feel it's a spoiler to say: that doesn't work out. 

Dr. Randall Mindy gets caught up in all of this: from the celebrity encounters to constant media appearances to close dealings with these power brokers, governmental and capitalistic alike. DiCaprio plays Mindy as intelligent, insecure, moral, and corruptible. Equipped with the heaviest midwestern accent this side of Fargo, North Dakota, Mindy navigates more trials and tribulations than any other character in the film, landing in some legitimately complicated moral circumstances. As one of our last great, pre-Marvel movie stars, DiCaprio continues to dominate the screen. It's redundant to repeat this this late into his career, but he possesses an incredible, ineffable charisma that practically forces him to  be noticed, even in more subdued roles like this. McKay acknowledges that in his writing, pushing Mindy into a romantic entanglement with Blanchett's lavish news anchor and making constant references to the fact that Mindy is incredibly attractive for a scientist. His plot is too busy to ever achieve true depth of character, but DiCaprio takes the few notes explicit in the writing—Mindy's intense anxiety, his depression and subsequent susceptibility to outside influence—and runs. In terms of performances, DiCaprio and Rylance rule the day here, with notable mentions to Jonah Hill (marginally funny in a one-note role) and Rob Morgan (similarly given very little to do other than be a steady presence).

The comet finally appears overhead with 45 minutes left in the film. Mindy, having just shirked his false yoke of luxury and acclaim, spots it through his windshield. He steps out and looks up. It's a hot white dot leaving a streak of flame and debris in its wake, and it's headed right for us. If the first two thirds of the film are about navigating government, media, and influence in an attempt to solve an existential threat, the final third is a resigned sigh. Despite all his evident passion and verve, McKay closes with a sense of bone-deep nihilism. Don't Look Up starts with the same repeated message: climate change (the comet) is bad and if we don't do something then we're all going to die. It ends with a much simpler idea: everything is out of our control and we're all going to die anyway. Conceptually, it's much like the rest of the film: inert and unhelpful. In execution, though, it provides one truly great moment. In my mind, the only worthwhile moment in the film.

Mindy, Kate, and Timothee Chalamet's Yule go grocery shopping together: cordial scavenging at the end of the world. They drive along a vast Michigan highway, not a car in sight. Snow marks the surrounding area. Eventually, they reach their destination: Mindy's family home. His wife (an underutilized Melanie Lynsky), long-ignored, accepts him back. He, her, their two sons, Yule, Kate, and, eventually, Dr. Oglethorpe cook dinner together. As they chop carrots and set the table, McKay cuts to a BASH mission meant to break up and mine the comet, making it safe for entry into Earth's atmosphere. The mission fails and the comet, still whole, makes contact. In the Mindy house, this makeshift family smiles through casual conversation about the taste of Stouffer's box stuffing and fresh-ground coffee beans. All this, even as the lights flicker and the walls begin to shake, devastation imminent. Mindy kisses his wife's hand. He speaks: "Thing of it is, we really did have everything didn't we?"