Don't Look Up (Adam McKay) [Netflix]

A bit of a stinker this one, unfortunately. I’m not a fan of McKay’s direction at all - I find his antsy, busy bombardment of imagery crude and distracting, and alas that is once again the case here. It’s edited to within an inch of its life, buying into that old Oscar cliche that the best editing is the most editing. There’s no sense of comic timing to any of this - it’s a baggy thing that stretches its conceit way too thin.

There’s a good idea at the heart of the film - a satire of society’s utter failure to take a clear, looming existential threat seriously. But that’s about all the film has to say about it. I was hoping the presence of prominent leftist journalist (or at least leftist by American standards) David Sirotta on the two-person writing team would give this thing a bit of zest. But regrettably I think the whole star-studded thing comes across, perhaps inadvertently, as glib and patronising in the very ‘Hollywood liberal’ sort of way - a sort of ‘look how bad you people are and how fucked the world is’ without really offering any kind of actual substantial solution. There are worthy targets taken to task here (in particular sinister corporate influence over policy and public opinion), but the satire is far too broad and said targets typically pretty easy. The film sets a lot of its cards on the table in the first 15-30 minutes - I don’t think it has much more juice to offer beyond that. While its obviously a satire about America, I found its absolute unwillingness to encompass a global perspective other than scattered references stood out quite a bit. Most of all, though, the film’s just not good.

I have no **** idea what film Mark Rylance thought he was in - I usually like the guy’s performances but my god this is a bad one.

There are spots where it might, despite itself, raise a chuckle or two. It starts from a worthwhile place but IMO never finds it feet as either a comedy or a drama despite trying very hard to be both. If you want a film about miserable bureaucratic and government failure to respond to a cataclysm, Shin Godzilla is sharper and funnier about it.

There’s a subplot here where the film takes aim at a light news show’s unwillingness to take grave news seriously, diluting it with humour and shallow platitudes. At its worst, this film is probably guilty of the same thing.

Oh it’s impossible to miss what they’re going for with Rylance’s character :) The problem is the performance itself - affected to the point of distracting, and comedic without being remotely funny. He sucks the air out of every scene he’s in: a profoundly misjudged performance tonally.

This tweet from the film’s co-writer is what a character in this film would tweet after the big comet awareness concert. It just reinforces for me that the film is immensely smug and self-satisfied, believing it’s incredibly, ‘holier than thou’ progressive and revolutionary while actually not being remotely progressive or forward-thinking at all.