Movie Review: Don’t Look Up!
Spoilers follow
“If reality conistently beats you to your punch, you’re not writing satire.You’re writing episode recaps ahead of time.”
The writers and director of “Don’t Look Up,” should have read Greenman’s piece in the NY Times. It might have saved everyone a lot of money and effort.
“Don’t Look Up,” is a satire of something. I’m pretty sure, anyway. The movie reviewing literati seem convinced it’s an allegory about climate change, but I don’t see it. The plot of “Don’t Look Up” revolves around discovering a comet’s due to smack into planet earth in a matter of months and what the dominant species tries to do about it. I don’t buy the comparison to climate change because there’s a world of difference between climate change (which we’re all — by and large — guilty of), and Mother Nature throwing humanity a curveball: a subtle reminder that despite our beloved creations — constitutions, rights, nation-states, global markets — the dominant species servers at her pleasure.
There’s a massive mea culpa involved with confronting plain old climate change. People on the right don’t want to admit that a consumer economy based on endless growth and rampant consumerism damages the earth, and likewise, those on the left have a hard time admitting that sometimes the earth needs trees more than good union men need jobs as loggers.
This is one of the reasons why I think climate change is such a sticky subject, however, “Don’t Look Up,” doesn’t even attempt to delve into these kinds of issues. Instead, the “Bad Guys” are written off as just “stupid,” and the “Good Guys” as just baffled by the “Bad Guy’s” stupidity. A good satire should offer some insight into the social phenomena it satirizes, like why working-class people often vote for people who aren’t really interested in their wellbeing. But when it comes to motivation for the “Bad Guys,” “Don’t look Up,” has nothing to say. They’re just selfish and dumb. A characterization so lazy even most children don’t find it believable.
Since the major conceit of the movie is something we (humanity) isn’t responsible for, I found it hard to buy into the climate change analysis, and so, as I watched, I opted for the Trump administration’s response to the COVID pandemic as the target of the “satire.” All the signs are there: a president who doesn’t seem to care about anything but themselves, to the point of even forgetting to bring her son along to escape the inevitable; supporters who wear baseball hats that look suspiciously similar to MAGA hats, the use of the term “libtard,” etc.
If all of this is sounding a bit blasé and familiar, that’s because it is. And that’s the problem with this film. I refer you to the quote at the top of this post. Had this come out before COVID or even before Trump, it would have been a lot funnier. Once something’s real, it’s not satire anymore, instead, it’s just depressing. I watched this film with two other people, all of us lefty-liberals, yet no one cracked a smile, not one laugh over the entire runtime. Maybe we’re sourpusses. Or maybe, we’ve ingested so many culture war think pieces, or slurped back too many “can you believe how stupid these guys are,” late-night comedy sets to find gawking at the “Bad Guys” terribly entertaining. Pointing at the other guy and saying: “you is stupid” isn’t really helping anyone. Problems like climate and COVID still plague us, and feeling righteous is a poor substitute for feeling hopeful about the future.
No one wants to be the bad guy. And in the age of doubling down, admitting you’re part of the problem is enough to have your friends stage an intervention. But as I watched, I couldn’t help but feel that the people who made this movie very clearly consider themselves to be the “Good Guys,” and they are in fact baffled by climate change deniers and guys like Trump. That’s why they can’t give them real personalities. I wonder if they’ve ever sat down and talked to anyone on the other side and asked them why they do what they do? I doubt it.