2022 Best Picture Review: Don’t Look Up
Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Yule (Timothée Chalamet) walk through the supermarket. Don’t Look Up is nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture.
Erin here, giving you another barely researched review on a prestigious Best Picture nominee. Today is my first 2022 entry, Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up. It can be found on Netflix, where apparently five bajillion people have already streamed it, but maybe you missed it because of its absurdly long run time. Oof, okay, onto the actual review!
“We really did have everything, didn’t we? I mean, when you think about it.”
One of the first times I saw a film directed by Adam McKay, it was on funnyordie.com. He had already created two excellent Will Ferrell vehicles (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby) but this was something a little different. He had written and directed one of the first big hits of the fledgling viral video YouTubemania of the late aughts: a short film called “The Landlord.”
I am pretty positive you have seen this. A disheveled Will Ferrell is confronted by his angry landlord: a potty-mouthed two year old dressed in a princess outfit. It’s about two and a half minutes of pure bliss. It’s irreverent, unexpected, and filmmaking at its uncomplicated best. When “The Landlord” was first released in 2007, the United States felt on the brink of something different. We were a country ready for hope and change, and the world felt wide open to me, a high school freshman looking towards the future.
Let’s fast forward about fifteen years. We have certainly been through it the last five or six years, haven’t we? I could say I’m a disillusioned millennial in her 30s, and while that is a marked difference from teenager me waiting for YouTube videos to load on her childhood home computer desktop, I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that the hope for change felt during the late 2000s has turned into a desperate plea. While seemingly trivial when you consider the current events of today, Adam McKay’s work has seemed to follow with the times. In his latest feature, Don’t Look Up, McKay takes on the Trump presidency and climate change, hitting you over the head with his message.
So, okay, Don’t Look Up stars Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky, a PhD candidate who discovers a meteor on a collision course with Earth, and Leonardo DiCaprio, the professor that agrees that society is in mortal and immediate danger. They attempt to warn the citizens of the world that we are in for certain death, all while trying to convince the president (a thinly veiled Donald Trump figure played by Meryl Streep) to do SOMETHING. It sounds heavy, right? I could say, “Yeah, but it has a comedic element like The Big Short and Vice, so it’s really watchable!” but honestly, it is really sad-mode most of the time. We are in the midst of a climate change crisis and it doesn’t feel like anything is really happening to prevent it, minus the disappearance of those Starbucks green straws when you get your iced latte at the drive-thru, so it’s a little hard to laugh at Jonah Hill’s Birkin bag as he follows his mom, Ms. Streep, like a puppy throughout the film.
I’m not saying that this movie is unwatchable—McKay always does a nice job of holding the audience’s attention. I think that I’m just looking for something different from him, since his last three films felt like he was trying to educate the masses on “really high level” topics, paired with an over the top, frenetic pop-culture lens. I think this worked with 2015’s The Big Short, which felt fresh and new. Now, though, I am feeling a little lectured to, and it’s coming across as a bit derivative and condescending.
What drives me a little nuts is that McKay sometimes says things that don’t appear to be in good faith. When an eagle-eyed watcher caught a glimpse of the masked crew in one shot of Don’t Look Up, it would be totally fair to just admit to the mistake. Instead, McKay insists that it was done purposefully, to “commemorate the strange filming experience.” I mean…we are really doing this? Because the movie isn’t morose enough as it is, right? Let’s throw in a reminder of the horrific pandemic we have been going through for years now…on purpose. I just don’t really buy it.
Wow, this sounds like I really disliked the film. I didn’t hate it, I promise! I think movies with a message are great, and I do appreciate that McKay tries new and complicated subject matters with his projects. There’s also a line late in the film involving Timothée Chalamet and fingerling potatoes that still makes me giggle. And you know what? I do think that the movie has some heart, especially near the denouement of the film, when the inevitable happens. I think I just want a little bit of a break. While “The Landlord” was a tight two and a half minutes, Don’t Look Up lumbers on for two and a half hours. I miss the levity and lightness of McKay’s older work. I’m hoping that we can move a little more in that direction, especially if, as the film implies, the end is closer than we may think.
Rating: 6.5/10