With absurdist gems like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers, Adam McKay became one of the most acclaimed comedy filmmakers in the world: a 21st-century Mel Brooks or David Zucker, basking in off-the-wall, anything-goes silliness and cramming as many jokes as possible into each scene. When the director parted ways with go-to leading man Will Ferrell, his career took an awards-baiting turn with fact-based dramas like The Big Short and Vice.These recent movies have been fine works of political docudrama, but they’re nowhere near as entertaining as McKay’s full-blown comedies. Audiences who enjoyed the wall-to-wall laughs of Anchorman and Step Brothers miss the days of news team brawls and Catalina wine mixers. McKay’s latest movie, Don’t Look Up, finds the sweet spot between these two types of filmmaking.In what was conceived as an allegory for climate change but now works just as well as an allegory for COVID, Don’t Look Up stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as two astronomers who discover a comet dubbed a “planet-killer” hurtling toward Earth. Naturally, world leaders want to profit from the comet, half of the political spectrum thinks it’s a hoax, and nobody seems to be taking the world-ending threat seriously. Bringing together McKay’s two directorial styles, Don’t Look Up has both the political weight of Vice and the all-out absurdity of Anchorman.
Satirizing An Already-Absurd Reality
It’s tricky to do South Park-style current-affairs satire in movie form. Trey Parker and Matt Stone have six days between coming up with an initial episode idea and airing the final product on TV. The headlines that formed the basis of their first couple of days of writing are usually still relevant at the end of the week after the voicing and animation work is complete. But a movie script takes years to finance, cast, shoot, edit, market, and release.
When Adam McKay and David Sirota (a Guardian journalist with a story credit) sat down to write an allegorical comedy about the looming dangers of climate change through the lens of an imminent apocalypse, they couldn’t have predicted that before the movie eventually hit screens, there would be an actual apocalyptic pandemic.
The real-life mismanagement of a global life-threatening crisis proved to be even more ridiculous than McKay had imagined. It’s getting increasingly difficult to satirize current events at all, even with a tight six-day deadline like Parker and Stone. The reality is already so blatantly absurd that satire is no longer a deconstruction of hidden meanings; it’s just pointing and saying, “Look at that.”
Once It Gets Going, It Really Gets Going
In its opening scenes, Don’t Look Up gets off to a slow start. There’s a lot of expository scientific mumbo jumbo setting up the threat of the comet. But once it gets going, it really gets going. McKay never stays with a character or situation for too long. Not everything lands, but there’s always something new or unexpected right around the corner.
The movie works best when McKay draws on his experiences as the head writer of Saturday Night Live and indulges in standalone sketches based on the premise of impending doom. A celebrity couple’s breakup is bigger news than the end-times. A bunch of people on a rooftop spend their final days having an orgy. People film the end of the world on their phones. There’s a great gag playing on DiCaprio and Lawrence’s reactionary talents as they’re shown a bunch of memes based on their characters’ first TV appearance.
The Music And Editing Are Top-Notch
Editor Hank Corwin captures the sprawling ensemble cast of Don’t Look Up with razor-sharp cross-cutting like a Tony Scott movie. In sequences involving TV appearances or political rallies seen around the globe, pretty much every cut takes the audience to a brand-new location, but it’s never confusing or jarring or overwhelming. Some characters naturally get sidelined and there are a couple of unnecessary subplots – namely DiCaprio having an extramarital affair – that pad out the runtime and distract from the movie’s messages. But for the most part, Don’t Look Up strikes an even pace.
Regular McKay collaborator Nicholas Britell provides a groovy score. In stark contrast to his somber Oscar-nominated work on Barry Jenkins’ movies, Britell’s Don’t Look Up score evokes old-school screwball comedies. His snappy, free-flowing orchestrations set the tone perfectly for the farcical tale of two smart people trying to get ignorant idiots to listen to them.
One Of The Most Star-Studded Movies In Recent Memory
With more A-listers than a 10km-wide comet could flatten, Don’t Look Up has one of the most star-studded casts in recent memory. DiCaprio and Lawrence, two of the most popular and sought-after actors in Hollywood, are backed up by such huge stars as Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, and Ariana Grande (not to mention a couple of unadvertised cameos).
DiCaprio plays hilariously against type as an insecure nerd, while Lawrence makes for an equally hilarious counterpoint as his more confident, more outspoken protégé. Meryl Streep gives one of the movie’s standout supporting turns as the gleefully amoral President Janie Orlean, embroiled in scandals and untrustworthy of proven science, but the funniest performance is given by Jonah Hill as the President’s son and Chief of Staff who talks a big game but ultimately has no idea what he’s doing.
Don’t Look Up Is A Fun Satire Without Any Answers
The messaging in Don’t Look Up is sound – the world is doomed and nobody cares – but the movie doesn’t necessarily have any answers. Maybe expecting a solution to climate change or a way to unite a deeply divided world is asking too much of an absurdist comedy. Don’t Look Up holds together more broadly as a bleak meditation on the end of humanity than it does through the narrow pinhole of a contemporary political statement.
Don’t Look Up is in theaters now and will stream on Netflix from December 24.