Jan 5

Jan 5 Adam McKay's "DON'T LOOK UP"

When I came in to see this movie on our living room TV I assumed it was an old film that had never been released in theaters and had gone straight to video. The jokes were flat and the satire too broad to be anything really contemporary. But then I saw who the stars were, how they looked, and then I saw a cellphone with three lenses on the back and I asked my wife, “What is this movie? This looks like something made fairly recently!”

That’s when I realized this was a recently released film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep, plus a host of other recognizable big-name faces.

But I still couldn’t get it — the satire about commercial TV’s foibles looked and sounded like something out of the 1980s or 1990s. But production values were good and special effects, used sparingly at first, seemed to be state of the art. But the humor, dialog, and imagery were overblown, flat, sophomoric, or totally unconvincing up until the end.

How did DiCaprio, Lawrence, and Streep agree to be in such junk? Did they really think they were making important and trenchant points about America’s lack of sophistication and willingness to ignore reality?

Yes, I’ve read all the reviews saying that the satire in DON’T LOOK UP IS biting and too-real. But I was sorely disappointed. Some of the dialog sounded like it was written at the last minute by someone with no appreciation for subtlety.

So, color me unimpressed. Yes, I agree our weather is changing and for the worse. Yes, I agree that too much media are useless and unsophisticated — and as we see from various Fox News personalities, can actually promote unnecessary illness and death. Somehow, though, I don’t think that a poorly written and edited movie like DON’T LOOK UP is going to make any difference, no matter what kind of star power is behind the effort.

If you really want good satire that is as likely to make you cry as to laugh, read Alexandria Petri.