After decades of whatever the scientific version of screaming at a wall is, we as a species have finally been reduced to blunt cynicism about our own extinction – and we should all be terrified it’s come to this. I get that Don’t Look Up, or director Adam McKay’s approach to its subject matter isn’t for everyone, but can we at least agree that he has a point? Can the sane among us admit that callous, short-sighted profiteers have been running things for far too long? Frankly, I’m not convinced Don’t Look Up is even a movie we’re supposed to “like” in the traditional sense. Yes, it can be ham-fisted and unceremonious. Yes, its editing and pacing can be grating, but do you know what else is grating? Science denial, anti-intellectualism, and planetary destruction. Or am I just being smug?
I’ve seen Don’t Look Up twice now. The first was with three or four fellow critics at a press screening that we were only allowed into after passing an at-home COVID test provided by Netflix (one of those fancy electronic ones). The second was sitting on the couch with my 20-year-old son. While I enjoyed my first viewing, it wasn’t until the second that I truly understood the power of McKay’s darkly comic negativity. My son, you see, never stopped laughing. And it wasn’t the kind of “funny, ha-ha” laugh you get from dipshit comedies, either. It was a deeply dystopian laugh that only comes from an acceptance of catastrophe. He was laughing to stay sane, and his entire generation (and the one after that, and the one after that if there is one) is doing the same thing.
So, you can accuse McKay and his cast of being smug. You can accuse them of beating you over the head with too many issues. You can accuse Don’t Look Up of not being as good as Dr. Strangelove, but know this: everyone younger than you is laughing at you. They’re laughing at your ineffectualness, at your unwillingness to face a crisis (or admit there is one), and at your condemnation of a movie that is at least trying to break through the same wall of myopic thinking the scientific community has been screaming at for decades. No, Don’t Look Up is not a perfect move. It has plenty of faults, but in the words of Minor Threat, “What the fuck have you done?”
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.