Film Review: Leonardo DiCaprio is good value as a dusty academic in Don't Look Up
Leonardo diCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Don't Look Up
(15A) stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr Randall Mindy, an astronomy professor whose PhD student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers that a comet is heading straight for Earth and is due to obliterate mankind in six months’ time.Â
Fearful that their news might provoke mass hysteria, Mindy and Dibiasky quietly report their findings to NASA, and thence to President Orlean (Meryl Streep), only to find themselves mocked and ignored, and their findings suppressed until the latest mid-term elections are out of the way.
Written and directed by Adam McKay ( ), is a satire on wilful ignorance, in which the comet, which represents an extinction-level event, is very quickly established as a metaphor for climate crisis.Â
As is generally the case with the best satire, the movie isn’t particularly funny, but is instead rather chilling: unfortunately for Adam McKay, his targets — a Trump-style presidency, complete with nepotistic appointments (Jonah Hill plays President Orlean’s son and slimy Chief of Staff), and a mass media more interested in generating click-bait than reporting the truth — are at this point virtually parody-proof.Â
That said, there’s plenty of gallows humour available here, and especially in McKay’s creation of the tech mogul Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), whose first instinct on being confronted by a ‘planet-killing comet’ is to try to mine it for precious metals.
Leonardo DiCaprio is good value too as the dusty academic who finds himself seduced by (a) fame and (b) TV host Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett), and who eventually throws up his hands at humanity’s failure to realise, or care, that its extinction is imminent. (cinema release)
