Don’t Look Up (2021)
To be honest, this film was probably 40 minutes too long and definitely lacked the clean writing and acting that would’ve made it really hilarious as a dark satire piece. Instead, the jokes feel quite forced and a lot of the plot vacillates too much between trying to be dramatic and trying to set up the comedy. The end really tries hard to teach a touching moral. Overall, it comes off as just a soapbox rant.
That all being said, as an allegory for polarization and our response to the coronavirus, it’s funny and sobering. And a big budget movie like this with a star studded cast can be fun otherwise — it’s just fun to see Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi writing a song for it and Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill playing another Trump family.
Obviously, the message lands, and its refreshingly anti-capitalist and anti-Musk. I like that media is noticing how horrific it is that people concerned about their stock price get to eulogize about humanity’s higher purpose. But, if your method is satirizing it, then I feel like you have to go all in, because otherwise you end up with the political preening in this film.
