Film of the Month: Netflix’s Don’t Look Up Is An Eye-Opening But Mind-Numbing Satire On Climate Crisis

PUBLISHED January 11th, 2022 06:00 am | UPDATED July 25th, 2024 02:30 pm

Freshly launched on Netflix in December, Don’t Look Up has already made quite the splash with record-breaking views and mixed reviews. In its first week, American filmmaker Adam McKay’s latest venture clocked 152.29 million viewing hours globally – the highest in Netflix history so far.

A glance at its star-studded cast alone might be enough to tell you why it’s making waves – with Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep all in one film, it’s got enough star power to fuel a spacecraft. But this astronomical comedy is also one that dives deep into dark truths about our society – where scientists are always ignored by people in power, and global issues are reduced to mere social media campaigns and commercial benefits.

Technology, power, greed, betrayal. Cloaking political and social innuendos with dark humour, Don’t Look Up centres around the discovery of a world-ending catastrophe by two midwestern astronomers: an anxious Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and indie PhD candidate Kate Diabiasky (Jennifer Lawrence). An extinction-level meteor – bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs – is about to hit earth. 

With only six months to the colossal hit, the protagonists head straight to Washington DC. There, they’re met by a dismissive reaction from a Trump-like President Orlean, who seems more concerned with how the announcement might interfere with her political party’s standing in the midterms.

In a quest to get the truth out there, the duo hit The Daily Rip, a morning television show, where their ‘cute’ scientific segment seems underwhelming against the public love life of a lavish pop-star. Frustrated with not being taken seriously, Kate’s publicly broadcasted breakdown leaves her a national joke, with only memes and laughs to her name. Mindy, on his part, is titled a hunky astronomer. 

The narrative only picks up when President Orlene seeks to exploit the scientific discovery as a media distraction, after a scandalous sexual escapade with a redneck political figure. Adding to the hijinks is an Elon Musk-esque tech mogul, with his own unsavoury plans to profit from the comet. And all this while, humanity’s doom hurtles toward earth.

There’s no doubt that Don’t Look Up‘s message of ‘acting now’ is timely in our present age of climate crisis. The indifference that greets the astronomers’ warnings of catastrophe mirror the general apathy confronted by environmentalists and scientists today, in their attempts to sound the alarm about global warming and rising carbon emissions.

Yet as many critics have commented, the film lays on the satire thick – to the point of heavy-handedness. While it has the potential to be a moving and thought-provoking piece of cinema, Don’t Look Up misses the mark this time, with its slow-moving plot and repetitive jokes. Though its portrayal of the self-serving state of our world is certainly on point, not to mention the urgent truth of dealing with our environmental crisis, the film slumped somewhere along the line into a self-righteous two-hour lecture. 

Furthermore, the film’s time duration felt quite long as McKay packs not just political agendas but celebrity worship, relationship issues, cancel culture and so much more into a mind-numbing two hours. Perhaps honing in on one or two of the aforementioned issues would ultimately have been more appropriate.

Perhaps the biggest reason why the film is garnering millions of views on Netflix is its dazzling cast, featuring the likes of Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, and Ariana Grande. Yet despite this brilliant supporting cast, the film fails to utilise them well – their characters feel unfinished, with few dialogues and to contribute to the movie.

If you’re planning on checking out the film, one Oscar-worthy scene worth looking out for is when Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dr Mindy finally bursts into fiery speech, shocked at the blatant dismissal of science. Another memorable scene is one of the film’s most heartwarming moments, as the two astronomers come together with family and friends to enjoy each other’s company over what would be their last supper.

Don’t Look Up is available for streaming on Netflix.

All photos courtesy of Netflix