Don't Look Up reviewed by Mark Kermode

don't look up which is uh the new film by uh adam mackay whose work i know you like um as do i uh starry cast includes jennifer lawrence leonardo dicaprio jonah hill rob morgan mark rylance tyler perry timothy chalamet that's pretty good ron perlman ariana grande cate blanchett and meryl streep good old meryl hi i'm meryl streep i'm meryl streep okay that's quite the cast so lawrence is uh jennifer lawrence is kate dibiaski who's an astronomer phd working under dicaprio's randall mindy she discovers an asteroid hooray he does the math on its trajectory and realizes that it is on course on course to hit the earth called bruce willis exactly let's drill some holes jason's story about you know was it jason's story wasn't ben affleck's story about saying to michael bate wouldn't it just be easier to train astronauts to drill i think that's jason i think it's jason okay fine anyway so um rob morgan is teddy oglethorpe who's a scientist in the department dealing with this kind of stuff he takes them seriously gets them jetted over to the white house for an urgent meeting with the president played by and meryl streep but as soon as they get to the white house where jonah hill is chief of staff everything falls apart so how certain is this there's 100 certainty of impact please don't say a hundred percent we just call it a potentially significant event but it isn't potentially going to happen 99.78 to be exact oh great okay so it's not a hundred percent i'm gonna call it 70 and let's just let's move on but it's not even close to 70 percent let's just use like 60 as a working number okay we're gonna get our own scientists on this you know no offense dr mindy is a tenured professor of astronomy at michigan state i'm sorry did you say michigan state exactly they have an excellent astronomy department you say so you want to see my s.a.t squad i'm sorry who is she at this very moment i say we sit tight and assess sit tight and assess sit tight and and assess you want us to sit tight and then assess very trumpian use of figures in statistics very good so it is basically muriel playing him um and so it took like a you know tragic comic satire about the political response to an impending tragedy in which no one is interested in scientific fact and everything is politicized so jennifer lawrence's character is exasperated by tv chat shows and ends up chatting we're all going to die which immediately just becomes an internet meme and the pictures of her face shouting we're all going to die becomes a joke dicaprio becomes the sexy scientist who with whom uh kate blonchett's fox tv style host promptly falls mark rylance is there sort of doing the evil side of his role from ready player one as the kind of the scientist who is actually the tech nerd who is actually boy who decides that actually what we don't want to do we don't destroy the the comic we want to monetize it because there's a way of making money out of it and he's got this kind of wall-to-wall teeth he's got his amazing performing teeth what's that monty python thing bongi and his amazing performing teeth and there's a bunch of people who don't believe in the comet and then there's a point when you can look up you can see the comment but then don't look up becomes the political don't look up don't look up that's basically what they want you to do they want you to be sheep and look up don't look up look straight ahead so the now clearly when the film was written because it was originally going to start filming in 2020 so that everything up until that point would it was precovered to do with you know global warming and you know global apocalypse and global catastrophe but in the wake of everything that's happened since then about you know anti-vaxx uh conspiracy theory and all the rest of it it's like what's interesting it just kind of maps in terms of the comedy itself it's just just believe whatever you care to believe regardless of any form of actual objective scientific fact i mean the film may not be as fabulous as its star-studded cast suggests but it's exactly the film you expect it to be and i quite like that kind of adam makai you know kind of slightly sly political satire that's very much on the broad side but that's okay i mean because he's the exec he's one of the execs with will ferrell on um succession yes and he made irresistible which we no no no he didn't make irresistible but do you remember when did he make your accessible anyway we you remember when we were doing kermadomes home entertainment service and we saw those two steve carell things irresistible and space force and we both liked them and a bunch of other critics went well they're far too obvious and far too on the nose when are they kind of enjoyed them anyway it's released in uk cinemas now globally on netflix on december 24th it is exactly what you would expect it to be and that was fine with me

Channel: kermodeandmayo

Views: 238,570

Keywords:

Id: UHCcR4WQ2B4

Length: 4min 54sec (294 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021