I can’t believe it’s been more than a month since I have last posted.  Sorry about that.  I saw Don’t Look Up about a month ago and I’ve been thinking about it, off and on, for much of that time.  It’s a very problematic film for me because, while I can see how professionally it is structured and enacted, I absolutely hated it, from the beginning almost all the way through.  Then I took a good look at writer-director Adam McKay’s film career, and I found that I haven’t liked a single movie he has made.  I still haven’t seen either of the two Anchorman comedies, but I don’t like his early comedies or his later political satires.  There’s just something nasty and evil about them that rubs me the wrong way, and this is amplified in Don’t Look Up.

Adam McKay’s satire utilizes just the type of premise that I appreciate: a big asteroid is found to be headed toward Earth and the race is on to save the day.  But the astronomers who discover it (Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo Di Caprio) are astonished to learn that the current political administration isn’t concerned at all, and the public could care less.  Months pass before action is taken, and when it is, the plan is disrupted by a batty genius (Mark Rylance) who convinces the Trump-ish president (Meryl Streep) to mine the asteroid for its riches instead of deflecting it away from the planet.  Will his plan work?  Is the planet worth saving?  Is this movie worth watching?

Satire is a tricky business, one which requires subtlety and nuance and deftness of touch.  McKay takes a sledgehammer approach to the premise, slamming the political establishment over and over and over.  Many viewers believe his real target to be the current climate crisis, and our government’s inability to grasp the situation, much less to do anything constructive about it.  That may be, but whether this is his metaphor or not, McKay’s perspective is painful to behold.  Almost all of his characters, including the scientists, are foolish, clueless, stupid and ineffectual.  Some are frightened; others are oblivious of the reality around them.  McKay’s viewpoint is that humanity, as it stands right now, does not deserve to survive.  I honestly don’t have any real problem with that perspective (in a movie sense, anyway), but it isn’t until the last few minutes of the story that he allows real, genuine humanity to creep into the picture, to show a little bit of the utter devastation that will ensue, and the unlucky and undeserving critters of this world, including most of us regular people, will needlessly suffer and die.

There are some clever touches here and there.  But for every funny line, or likable character, or insightful glimpse of human nature (like Lawrence unable to grasp why the general was charging money for free snacks), there are ten or more unfunny lines, hateful caricatures and overwrought indictments of our culture.  I don’t disagree with much of what he is angry about, but his approach is like yelling angrily at the breeze from a tornado still miles away but heading in your direction.  I hated Meryl Streep’s president (I know, we are supposed to); I hated Mark Rylance’s business guru (I know, we are supposed to) and I hated spending more than two hours watching good actors flailing away at a storyline that is dead set against them.  Call me crazy but I would rather watch a traditional, hopeful, corny disaster movie like Deep Impact than this.  This was like cheesy Armageddon with a bad attitude and the idea that the asteroid should prevail.  ☆.  2 February 2022.