Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Adam McKay
Screenplay by Adam McKay
Story by Adam McKay and David Sirota

NETFLIX, from 24 December 2021

MAIN CAST
Leonardo DiCaprio – Dr Randall Mindy, astronomy professor
Jennifer Lawrence – Kate Dibiasky, astronomy PhD student
Meryl Streep – President Orlean
Cate Blanchett – Brie Evantee, TV show anchor
Rob Morgan – Dr Teddy Oglethorpe, head of NASA department
Jonah Hill- Jason Orlean, president’s son, White House chief of staff
Mark Rylance- Jason Isherwell, owner of BASH Technologies
Tyler Perry – Jack Bremmer, TV show anchor
Timothée Chalamet- skateboarding youth
Ron Perlman – Benedict Drask, American hero
Ariana Grande – Riley Bina, pop megastar
Scott Mescudi – DJ Chello, rapper
Himesh Patel – Phillip, Kate’s boyfriend
Melanie Lynskey – June Mindy, Randall’s wife
Paul Guifoyle- General Themes

There will be no plot spoilers.

In the early days of Covid, I remember saying, ‘Netflix will have made it when they have the new George Clooney.” They did, a year ago with The Midnight Sky. Now they add Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett. I still don’t understand how they moneytize it, but they do. Production values are high, with some huge senes.

I’d read a couple of reviews before I saw it, and they were snarky. They had the “Knock the Supergroup” or ‘cut down the tall poppy’ syndrome dripping out of them. With such a stellar line up, the critical inclination, no the feral instinct, is to write knocking copy. I call such reviewers Camillas, after Camilla Long of The Sunday Times. In the same issue in which Tom Shone gave a snooty two star review of Don’t Look Up, Camilla discussed the Impeachment TV series and said that the vile Clinton whistleblower, Linda Tripp, was a “Karen.” Whoah! In our house, importing a nasty American name insult that is little known in Britain is a cardinal sin. Especially with Karen. So henceforth a reviewer who makes their living from writing snooty and snarky copy will be a Camilla.

It is a supergroup line up. Four undisputed A listers … Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett. Add Britain’s best stage actor, Mark Rylance. Then pop superstar Ariane Grande teamed with Kid Cudi. Up and coming major star? Timothée Chalamet. Drop in the star of Yesterday, Himesh Patel. Surround them with major comic talent like Jonah Hill (incidentally, the brother of Beanie Feldstein who plays Monica Lewinsky in Impeachment) and Rob Perlman. Tyler Perry is in there. Put in Rob Morgan for the serious role.

I’d read it was a comedy / disaster movie. I’d read that it was a satire. I knew it was about two astronomers (DiCaprio and Lawrence) who spot a comet which will extinguish all life on Earth in six months time. Those basic facts made me think Towering Inferno with a celebrity cast doing cameos in a disaster. The “comet approaching Earth” scenario is a film category all of its own … Armageddon, Deep Impact, Night of the Comet, The Day The Earth Exploded, Asteroid, Impact, Judgment Day, Meteor. Just with those facts and looking at the cast list, I had guessed correctly that Meryl Streep would be playing the US President.

The start satirizes just about every recent Hollywood picture’s “Based on true events / Based on a true story” that seems to preface the majority of movies. This one has BASED ON TRULY POSSIBLE EVENTS. Also among the film company logos at the start, they slip in BASH technologies. This is the fictional mega (Mega?) tech company in the film. This is not a film where we should examine the science too closely.I Googled though, and NASA does have a department working on ways of destroying a dangerous comet or asteroid. Is it a comet or an asteroid? The film needs a comet for the tail. When they show it close up, the 9-10 kilometre wide object is definitely an asteroid. No matter. It’s the size of the one that created the Gulf of Mexico and extinguished the dinosaurs,

Reviews suggest that at two hours eighteen minutes it is too long to sustain a satire. I’m of the opinion that 100 minutes is perfect for comedy, 120 is perfect for drama, and an epic can add about 30 minutes to 150, and most films would benefit from adhering to those lengths. However during Don’t Look Up, I never once felt restless or bored or ‘this is going on a bit.’ A note … there is a point where you think it’s ended. It hasn’t. There’s a (brilliant) coda set 22,000 years in the future. Then you might switch off where the rolling credits get to listing the location drivers and catering assistants. Don’t. Let it roll right through to the last credit, because there’s a second short coda with Jonah Hill. If you’ve seen it and missed that, it’s on Netflix. You can put it back on and scroll through (which is what we did when a friend told us).

It’s an allegory as much as a satire. Destruction is on its way, extinction is on its way, but there is (just) time to do something to stop it. Throughout there are two or three second cuts to wildlife and nature and babies without comment, The comet represents climate change. The clock is ticking, but it’s not too late to react. Will we?

The story is about the political and media lack of reaction to the imminent danger. It rings true. In the face of danger, politicians wriggle, lie, then deny anything is happening at all … Climate change? Covid? Both work. The media, epitomised by Jack and Brie, anchors of the morning TV show The Daily Rip, want cheerful pap. The military are used as a patriotic sideshow distraction. Then as the politicians manipulate, the great American public prefer denial of the danger to confrontation. They seize on straws of hope (a mission to destroy the comet) then when all fails, prefer to simply chant the mantra ‘Don’t look up.’

I’ll describe the characters. I started and saw I was putting ‘a great performance’ after very one. I’ve deleted it. Take it as read.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Dr Mindy. A meek and mild astronomy professor at Michigan State University, a family man. The Sunday Times review lampooned his progression of constantly “turning up” the performance, but I’d say that is Di Caprio’s virtue.

Jennifer Lawrence is Kate Dibiasky. She’s a doctoral student and discovers the comet. She gets Dr Mindy to run the calculations and they realize its route and calculate its arrival … six months and fourteen days time. She is not a media person, unfashionable in chunky sweaters, nose ring. She says ‘fuck’ a lot. They reveal their find to Teddy (Rob Morgan) who runs NASA’s anti-comet division, and are whisked to the White House, two lone figures in the hold of a huge transport plane, all that was instantly available.

They they cool their heels in a corridor, and get ripped off by the US general … a fact that Kate talks about in bemusement all the way through. Teddy as Head of NASA forms a three person group with them, but is the serious guy and gets fewer lines.

The reason they’re kept waiting for hours is the personal issues of the president, played by Meryl Streep as Donald Trump in a bright red frock, much better looking, but just as self-centred and focussed on votes and rabble-rousing. She is focussed on mid-term elections, and having trouble with her Supreme Court appointment of a right-wing Sheriff who turns out to be a porn star (and her lover). She’s not interested in the comet.

The president points out that she was filmed smoking, but her ratings went up. No one cares what she does, and on the contrary applaud her bad behaviour.

Then we have President Orlean’s nose sniffling twitchy son (cocaine), Jason. Jonah Hill is singled out as outstanding and he is. Rude, vile, deriding Kate at all times. The worst of political advisors, and there have been a few of those.

Yes, she appointed her own son as chief of staff. Would Jared, sorry Jason, be based on anyone?

So Kate and Dr Mindy decide they have to reveal all to the media on The Daily Rip TV show. This is a favourite sequence. The anchors are Jack (Tyler Perry) and Brie (Cate Blanchett). Jack has a permanent smile and can only understand positive news, indicating a lobotomy perhaps. Brie is sexually voracious. Jack is a drooler.

They see the whole thing about the comet as a joke with a funny scientist. They don’t find Kate funny at all and she loses her temper and drops an F-bomb on national TV.

In the green room (waiting area) Dr Mindy and Kate meet Riley Bina (Ariana Grande) … a very funny cameo by Ariana, I’m fighting not to joke spoil here, and her performance on the morning show is even funnier. Late in the film, she performs ‘Don’t Look Up’ in a benefit concert, and that’s also a memorable pastiche.

An aside … it brought back a morning TV show in Guadalajara. Why I was invited to appear, I will never know. But I was waiting with a matador in full costume, a weightlifter and two teenage girl singers. I was introduced as ‘the world’s greatest English teaching expert,’ I suppose I should have modestly deferred, but my translator was nodding enthusiastically, so I simply smiled. (they might have had a point, after all).

Things go on apace. Kate’s boyfriend (Himesh Patel) dumps her and sells his story.

Dr Mindy goes from nervous, nerdy fellow when the comet is discovered to famous personality and lover, then he joins the dark side as presidential aide, to finally realizing nobody is doing anything and he is absolutely fucking furious and has every right to be so.

Dr Mindy is seduced both by fame and more carnally by Brie, who boasts that she screwed two US presidents (another reference to Impeachment perhaps, I wondered who the other one was).

Kate gives up on it all and returns to Illinois to work as a store clerk, where she meets shoplifting skateboarder Yule (Timothée Chalamet). There will be a perfunctory romance. Yule turns out to be a devoted Christian.

I won’t go into the dramatic bits at all, but the other central character is Peter Isherwell, the third richest person in the world and owner of BASH, a company that makes the revolutionary world-beating smart LiiF phone and computers. No, the logo isn’t a well-known fruit. Mark Rylance plays him in his trademark quiet, understated, slight stammering way revealing banks of perfect teeth. It turns out that BASH is more important than the US government, and the president does what Peter tells her.

Watch the film to find out what happens, though I will reveal Dr Mindy’s final despairing line:

We really did have everything, didn’t we?

Dr Mindy

The critics? Well, not every film can be Casablanca or Citizen Kane. As I mention in my review of Mank, I have actually watched Citizen Kane in the last twelve months. I can tell you that in retrospect, Citizen Kane is no ‘Citizen Kane’ either.

I used to say a great Hollywood movie was one that made people queue for tickets in the rain on a Friday night, and to emerge later feeling they’ve thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Nowadays, it’s a film that reminds you to continue your subscriptions to Amazon Prime and Netflix and one you recommend to friends. This one ticks the requisite boxes.

We talked about the science. Not that it matters in an allegory. The dinosaurs would not have been extinguished in a sudden bang. We’re told the impact will create a mile high tsunami destroying the world. But it wouldn’t, would it? Lhasa in Tibet is at 11,995 feet, Mexico City is 7349 feet above sea level, Quito 9350 feet, Bogota 8,596 feet, Sana’a 7710 feet. Denver, famed for being exactly one mile above sea level would surely have seen the waves reduced by The Rockies on one side and distance in the other. This is a tribute to Google, not memory of Geography A level. What happens surely is that after the tsunami, the sky is obscured by ash and the world darkened for years. Possibly the oxygen balance in the atmosphere is altered. The dinosaurs would have died out over years as vegetation failed. It seems daft talking about the science in the context, but then at 10 kilometres across it’s an asteroid, not a comet. It’s also NOT really about an asteroid … it’s about climate change on a compressed scale, with a tinge of pandemic.