Don’t Look Up: Biting Commentary of Corporatocracy

Adam McKay made a name for himself in the 2000s with comedies like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Step Brothers, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Since his split with Will Farrell, he has made a name for himself with comedic takes on serious topics like The Big Short and Vice, which tackled the 2008 housing crisis that led to the Great Recession and the vice presidency of Dick Cheney. His latest movie Don’t Look Up continues this trend with a look at what happens when preventing a global catastrophe and the interests of large corporations do not line up.

Don’t Look Up follows Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) who discover that a comet will impact Earth in a little over six months. The force of the impact due to the size of the comet will be an extinction event which will wipe out all life on the planet. They set out to raise awareness about the impending planetary doom and are blocked almost every step of the way by a government who is not interested in doing something unless it is politically expedient, corporations who are telling the government how to act based on what will help their own bottom line, and media outlets who only care about the story if it will help their viewer metrics.

Although the acting performances from this ensemble cast are all great, it is unlikely that any one cast member walks away with an Academy Award nomination for this movie. This tends to be the case with movies that have a huge cast of big names who all do their jobs well because no one performance stands out as the best and it all becomes an amalgam of “well everyone was good.” That said, it is of note that, of the three actors who could reasonably be considered the leads; all three break their typical mold that we would expect them to be. DiCaprio and Lawrence both play antisocial and awkward scientist types while Meryl Streep plays a caricature of a recent United States president. These roles on their own are not exactly unique, but the actors in the roles bring something new to each of them, making them fun to watch.

The movie does have one issue, but that issue is less with the movie itself and more with how the world has changed since this project entered production. It seems obvious that when the project was greenlit and in preproduction, the metaphor was supposed to be about climate change. Since 2019 there have been a handful of other existential crises that have struck, both foreign and domestic, that the movie appears to attempt to hit all of them with Covid in the most obvious crosshairs. It is unlikely that how much, if any, of the movie was rewritten during the Covid-related filming delay will ever be revealed so it is just the audience’s interpretation that will lead to confusion. Ultimately though, the movie cannot be faulted for changes in the real world that reframe how the picture is viewed.

Don’t Look Up is available on Netflix and is worth a watch if a viewer enjoyed Vice and/or The Big Short specifically. The movie features a lot of the same cinematographic and editorial choices which are divisive among viewers, so if those were enjoyed, the viewer will safely enjoy this as well. On top of that, the movie is existentially depressing in a way that other movies are not because this deeply cynical take on how the end of the world may transpire is too realistic based on recent events. That said, it is refreshing that a movie can act like this and not say the words “republican,” “democrat,” “liberal,” “conservative” or any other word used to divide people up by political party since the apathy shown by those in power in this movie are not confined to any one political party. The expression “a hit dog will holler” does exist for a reason though so someone will see themselves in the black mirror of this science fiction story, not like the reflection, and probably vocalize it on their cable news show. It is a cynical centrism that South Park aspires to have, although Don’t Look Up manages to use it for social commentary properly.

Rating: 8/10