Don’t Look Up Falters Because of Fifth Grade Humor and Unnecessary Hyper-Partisan Bias

Yes, I get it. Global warming is a problem, and we are essentially digging our own graves. But just because someone makes a satire critiquing the human road to doom, doesn’t automatically make the movie worth seeing. Don’t Look Up, I’m talking about you, and worse yet, the Adam McKay film actually moves us closer to midnight on the doomsday clock.

So Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) has discovered a comet, and celebration is abound for the doctoral candidate. Unfortunately, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) has done the calculations, and the celestial body is heading right for us.

So both dialed in and pretty devastated, the duo makes the necessary phone calls and gets the expected skepticism from NASA and the The Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Ten minutes in and the film is actually on trajectory. In other words, DiCaprio and Lawrence seem like real people, and with a baseline set, the humor works when they veer off.

For instance, as reality sets in and the end of the world is in sight, Lawrence’s subsequent deadpan satisfies - despite being the last thing you’d ever hear from a nerdy graduate student. “I gotta go get high,” she hits the sweet spot.

Unfortunately, we’re not so lucky with most of the other characters, and arrival at the Oval Office begins the unraveling. The scientists reveals the bad news to the President (Meryl Streep) and her Chief-of-Staff son (Jonah Hill). “There will be mile high tsunamis fanning out across the globe. If this comet makes impact, it will have the power of a billion Hiroshima bombs,” Dr Mindy foretells.

I guess to the film’s credit, the President doesn’t say this : “I know how to avoid the comet. We could blow up the earth.”

If she did, the fifth graders would be rolling in the aisles. The actual dialogue isn’t much better, though. “You’re breathing weird. It’s uh, making me uncomfortable,” Hills’ disproportionate satire completely misfires.

The response only makes sense if Hill is an absolute moron, and the same goes when the President muses how the comet will affect the midterms. So once again, comedy and satire makes a lot more sense if the characters bear some relation to real life.

For instance, a more believable exchange might have the characters questioning the projections because Mindy and Dibiasky are only from Michigan State. Well, both the President and her son do exactly that.

The arrogant dismissal plays perfectly and a number of scenes also hit the mark. Nonetheless, the script overwhelmingly tries to appeal to fifth graders and fails by refusing to establish the baseline qualities we found in Kubrick’s President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) or General 'Buck' Turgidson (George C. Scott).

The same issue cuts across the justifiable criticisms made on American culture as a whole. Way over the top, the problem descends even further because the assault takes a strongly partisan turn. At first, Streep and Hill come off as big, dumb powerful non affiliated leaders. Hill actually remains that way. He could be seen as Hunter Biden or Donald Trump Jr throughout.

But Streep becomes Donald Trump in a dress, and the criticism going full blast, you just lost half your audience. Add in the conservative caricature of all things Fox News, and we’re made to believe that only Republicans are to blame for America’s societal ills.

Once again the film is completely out of touch with reality, and the comedy suffers as a result. So does the chance to reach the people who are trailing behind. Only 39% percent of Republicans believe that Climate Change is a serious problem, according to a recent poll by the Washington Post, and your film just called them all idiots.

I think a little shared idiocy would go much further.  That huge Yacht DiCaprio owns for one, and children dredging dangerous lithium out of Congolese mines for your Prius sounds just a little hypocritical.

So thanks for needlessly elevating the ire of the conservatives we need to ensnare for our futures.  Nonetheless, I would simply have settled for a movie that was actually funny.