Adam McKay’s celeb-packed Netflix comedy aims to be a farcical warning of climate change but broad potshots and a smug superiority tanks his message
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Don't Look UpLast modified on Mon 27 Dec 2021 07.08 GMThen persuading someone to change their mind on a major topic, what’s being said isn’t always quite as important as how it’s said. If a person feels attacked or disrespected or condescended to, they’ll turn off their brain and block out the most rational, correct arguments on principle alone.
McKay evinces a clear understanding that some measure of this apathy comes from Dr Mindy’s dry approach in spite of his message’s gravity, the crucial facts and figures boring chief of staff Jonah Hill into mock-sleep. But the director suffers from a variant of the same issue himself, putting off even the audiences inclined to agree with his stances through an ineffective delivery.
Fingers point in every direction, only for the blame to boomerang back to the mindset this film embodies. The easy potshots at celebrity culture and our fixation on it – mostly in the form of a bubbleheaded pop star named Riley Bina, played by good sport– ring hollow in a production packed to bursting with attention-grabbing A-listers.
The character making it out of this film least-scathed is the Timothée Chalamet’s Yule, a young skate rat hanging out around the hometown to which Dibiasky eventually returns. A soft-spoken and soulful kid, he’s an ex-Evangelical still figuring out what his faith means to him, philosophically adrift but self-assured enough to stick up for himself when she offhandedly says something callous during the fling that sparks between them.
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