ReelBob: ‘Don’t Look Up’ ★

By Bob Bloom

My suggestion about “Don’t Look Up” — don’t look at.

Adam McKay’s sledgehammer satire is lazy and obvious. Effective satire should be finessed with a scalpel not a carving knife.

McKay wastes a good cast in this dark comedy about an astronomy professor and his graduate student who discover a comet on a collision course with Earth. But when trying to warn the world, are met with indifference and basically ignored.

Leonardo Di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence as, respectively, Dr. Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky embark on a media tour to alert people, but, again, their efforts are thwarted by happy talk morning-show hosts, played by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry, who continually deflect from the dire news.

The characters and situations are too clownish and over-the-top to be taken seriously, which dilutes the impact of McKay’s premise.

Meryl Streep as President Janie Orlean and Jonah Hill as her chief-of-staff son, Jason, are especially buffoonish, thinking mostly about the political fallout of announcing a world-ending event.

The movie is an all-out assault on climate-change deniers and the distractions created by social media, but McKay’s points are drowned out in all the noise created by his oversized cast — which also includes Rob Morgan, Mark Rylance, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande and Ron Perlman.

“Don’t Look Up” is snarky and condescending, jabbing its cinematic fingers at those opposing McKay’s point of view. Ironically, it perfectly defines today’s contentious society.

The shame of it is that McKay had the right idea, but his execution is too scattershot — he takes too many topics, throws them against the wall and uses those that stick — which appears to be most of them.

Plus, at 145 minutes, “Don’t Look Up” wears you out. Its tonal shifts are distracting and the hammy performances by several cast members — yes, you, Streep, Blanchett and Perry, especially — make you cringe — and this is coming from someone who would sit in a theater to listen to Streep or Blanchett read recipes from a cookbook.

McKay has given us some wonderful movies — “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “The Big Short” come to mind — so he can get a pass for one misstep.

“Don’t Look Up” is a bloated, overheated disaster that crashes to Earth with a resounding thud.

I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap substack and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.

DON’T LOOK UP
1 star out of 4
(R), language, nudity, sexual content, language, drug use