Don't look up

The director and writer Adam McKay seems to take a malicious pleasure in caricaturing our current society and showing the many dysfunctions that plague it. After several comedies with his favorite actor Will Ferrell (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Step Brothers (2008), The Other Guys (2010) and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2003)), director Adam McKay has been working on much more ambitious films with impressive casts such as The Big Short (2015) and Vice (2015). His new film Don't look up: Cosmic Denial is his first science fiction film even if he remains faithful to his favorite genre, the cartoon. This time he castigates not only the politics of the post-Trump United States but also social media and the world of news broadcast all day on television.

Upon discovering the first few minutes of Don't Look Up, it's impossible not to think of the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in which prehistoric men discover a giant monolith and thus find themselves facing an event that is beyond them.  Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy student, and her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo Di¢aprio), make an important discovery: a comet is orbiting the solar system and heading straight for Earth. The collision between this meteorite and the earth would trigger the end of our global society. Kate and Randall must then embark on a campaign to warn not only the President of the United States but also the media, including a very popular show, the Daily rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). 

Kate and Randall have only six months to raise awareness and get the U.S. to launch a major program worthy of Michael Bay's 1998 film Amageddon. Unfortunately, between U.S. President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her son and chief of staff, Jason Orlean (Jonah Hill), and a press that doesn't listen to, let alone believe, Kate and Randall, the chances of saving the earth seem impossible. When a powerful business leader starts to step in and help without listening to the advice of renowned scientists, things get even worse.

Don't Look Up: Cosmic Denial right on Christmas Eve doesn't seem like a good idea as this film is so pessimistic and doesn't celebrate the spirit of Christmas at all. As the world continues to live under the grip of a global pandemic and a new variant of covid 19 (Omncron) spreads beyond measure, is it really the right time to propose a movie about the end of the world.  

Of course, the film is not bad in itself but it is really disappointing because the scenario of this film is cruelly lacking in ambition and different levels of reading. We can certainly feel the ambition of the director Adam McKay to find the epic breath of films like Deep Impact (1998), The Day after Tomorrow (2004), see Knowing (2009) while benefiting from an imposing cast with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Michael Chiklis, Tomer Sisley, Paul Guilfoyle, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep. But such a cast does not hide the many scriptural weaknesses of this film. However, the film lets us see what it could have been if it had been much more relevant on themes that it only skims over here, such as the negationism of the facts, the other side of the Hollywood set, the social and political cleavages, the harmful side of social networks of a population that can no longer speak to each other live, human vanity and the fact of putting profit in the center of everything.

In the same way, the idea of proposing scenes during the end credits or even at the very end of it is not new but since Marvel studios knew how to show all its importance, many directors have tried to do the same and Don't Look Up with a scene reminding us by certain aspects of Avatar (another planet, other forms of life) and another that seems to be a simple copy-paste of an episode of The Twilight Zone (Time Enough at Last (1959)) If you like this kind of science-fiction movie we can only advise you to wait for Moonfall by Roland Emmerich which will be released in February 2022...

Don't Look Up
Written and directed by Adam McKay
Produced by Adam McKay, Kevin Messic
Story by Adam McKay, David Sirota
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis, Tomer Sisley, Paul Guilfoyle, Robert Joy, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep
Cinematography Linus Sandgren
Edited by Hank Corwin
Music by Nicholas Britell
Production company : Hyperobject Industries
Distributed by Netflix
Release date : December 5, 2021 (New York City), December 10, 2021 (United States), December 24, 2021 (France)
Running time : 138 minutes

Seen on December 24, 2021 on Netflix

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