Don't Look Up reviews

[Okri]

Man, I wish I had watched the film before reading the discourse.

I should have known better.

[mlrg]

If Adam McKay was kept from directing and only be allowed to Executive produce like he does in Succession, is movies would be top notch.

[Sabin]

I wonder if this thing is going to do a little better than perhaps we might think with voters. Sure, reviews might be lousy but the sense I'm getting is that it's being watched and talked about. Adam McKay is firmly in the club at this point and it has a ridiculous amount of star power behind it.

Just a thought.

[danfrank]

There’s just an immaturity in the filmmaking here, which might work okay in a Will Ferrell comedy but not in a movie that’s supposed to be about something. The one central idea is pretty solid, but then there are seemingly a hundred or more bad choices made. The actors give it their all but it’s in the service of an undisciplined, unfunny script. All would have been forgiven if it had been funny. But no. My one chuckle was the line about meeting the boyfriend’s mother in 7 months.

McKay doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with Wes Anderson, but what their latest films have in common are (comedy) scripts with lots of ideas and large, star-filled casts. Anderson has the skill and discipline to direct his actors in such a way that there is a consistent comedic tone, while with McKay the actors are all over the place (with Rylance waaay out on a tiny limb). Anderson’s writing is subtle and sophisticated, while McKay’s is broad and sophomoric. McKay had a pretty good movie with The Big Short, but it’s clear that the emperor has no clothes, or at least threadbare ones.

[Mister Tee]

There is a very funny running gag where Jennifer Lawrence is obsessed about the price of White House snacks that delighted me. Beyond that, I was left with snickers in a vacuum.

You stole my thunder here: i was going to say the one thing in the movie that truly made me laugh was Lawrence's fixation on the snacks issue; it seemed the most genuinely comic juxtaposition (even with the world set for destruction, she can't let this go). I also enjoyed her telling her boyfriend she'd talk to his mother in 7 months.

I agree with dws that this is better than Vice -- if only because it starts a story and follows it through to an ending -- but I also just think it should be way funnier than it is. It may be that too much of the movie is focused on stuff that's un-parody-able because the original is so self-evidently ludicrous. Tyler Perry does a really great job of capturing the "move-it-along/keep it light/don't really think about what you're hearing" style of daytime hosts -- but, nearly a half-century post-Network, is there anything left to say about how absurd most of media is?

The finale -- the smart folk surrendering to their fate and trying to enjoy one last meal -- might have worked in someone's film, but not Adam McKay's: there no sign he's ready to achieve such a shift in tone. Three "serious" movies in, and he's still mostly there for the yuks. He's pretty much what most of us thought he was prior to The Big Short -- a film that it turns out was misleadingly good.

Could this still end up with a best picture nod? I guess; they've got to find ten, and there just aren't enough respectable candidates within normal Academy range. Could Leo make the best actor list? He's perfectly solid throughout -- he disappears into the character more than he's sometimes been able to, and he has that big late on-air meltdown. If JLaw could slip in for Joy seemingly on inertia, there's every possibility DiCaprio could do the same here.

[Sabin]

Adam McKay's concept is pretty good. Two scientists have to convince the world that it's facing annihilation and want to get the message out to a world that billionaires, and the government, and the media are trying to distract for their own self-interest -- workable concept. I think a lot goes wrong after that and it just ends up sort of like a two-and-a-half hour goon show. To be honest, I don't know if the bigger problem is if it just has too many different targets or the fact that it doesn't have a funny take on any of them. I certainly understand the former; we live in a target-rich environment. Whatever anyone else says about this movie, it's a big swing. But it's undeniably a failure of comedy. Almost every scene collapses under the weight of the question "Why is this funny?" I wonder if positioning Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as the clear protagonists was the right idea for a film, or if doing more of a panorama of institutional failures like Dr. Strangelove would've helped to present a clearer comic vision of our world. I could easily see a clearer thesis presented if the two scientists were off to the side, getting corrupted by our world, only to return to sanity in the nick of time. I don't know; either way, it's two and a half hours of watching Adam McKay hold a mirror up to the world and I have to believe there's a better approach than that.

The Timothee Chalamet scenes work. There is a very funny running gag where Jennifer Lawrence is obsessed about the price of White House snacks that delighted me. Beyond that, I was left with snickers in a vacuum.

I guess I'm glad it exists but who is this really going to convince about climate change when all it does is run around taking pot shots at Red America?

I think has a shot at nominations. It shouldn't but Adam McKay is in the club now, they have to nominate ten things, and I could see enough voters liking it. Best Original Screenplay is in the cards. That Ariana Grande song has a shot although I think it should be singled out as a prime example of how this film doesn't know how to be funny. Maybe Best Film Editing or Best Original Score. I'm inclined to say that DiCaprio won't end up in the final five but on the other hand, he's certainly got enough showy scenes and a big Howard Beale rant. If not enough voters see Cyrano or The Tragedy of Macbeth, then why not? I don't see anyone else getting in.

[dws1982]

Rylance gives one of those terrible performances that could only come from a great actor, totally committed to his craft and to the role.

I'm trying to put together thoughts on this. I didn't like it, although it has its moments and it's way way way better than Vice, and I think a lot of the negative reviews were just trying to score easy dunks on McKay rather than actually engage with the film. I hate to be the annoying guy who always says it (I feel like I say it a lot) but it probably would've worked better as a miniseries, although I still don't think I would've liked it.

[Big Magilla]

As most of you know, I was no fan of either The Big Short or Vice, but I did like most of this.

Leonardo DiCaprio is excellent, and Jennifer Lawrence is quite good, as the astronomers with good support from Rob Morgan as a NASA scientist, Melanie Lynskey as DiCaprio's wife, Timothée Chalamet as Lawrence's friend, and surprisingly, Ariana Grande as a parody of herself. Even Jonah Hill as Streep's son and Tyler Perry as a jovial TV host aren't bad, but Meryl Streep deserves a Razzie for this, with Mark Rylance, Cate Blanchett and Ron Perlman not much better.

The satire plays well, with the film's comet deniers eerily similar to vaccine science deniers but the characters played by Streep as a flaky female U.S. president, Rylance as the richest man in the world, Blanchett as Perry's sparring TV partner, and Perlman as a too old astronaut, are written and played way too broadly.

Oscar nods for Best Picture, Cinematography, Editing, Song, and Score would not be out of the question.

[Mister Tee]

I will say this: we might be missing top-drawer indies like Nomadland and The Father, but in its place we do have two Hollywood heavyweight productions (Dune, West Side Story) in its place. I know that it's comparing apples to oranges but at the very least it's nice to see works of that scale connecting, even if more original ventures would be appreciated as well.

This is why I say combine the two years. Last year, because of the pandemic, was fully populated by movies no studio cared about giving a full theatrical release -- small indies that wouldn't have generated that much income in theatres, plus anything from Netflix, whose model views theatrical exposition as obligatory nuisance. This year, we've got the big and semi-big films that were held back/would have been released in a non-COVID 2020 (in addition to West Side and Dune, The French Dispatch, House of Gucci, NIghtmare Alley); too bad we're missing the indie part of the recipe.

And, yes, brain cramp: Dune is obviously also going to be a best picture nominee; may even lead the nominations.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
It's starting to seem like the worst possible year to return to a guaranteed 10 best picture nominees; under the last decade's system, we might have finally fallen short of even 8. Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, Belfast, West Side Story and (still) King Richard are the only entries I'd be reasonably sure about, with The Tragedy of Macbeth and Cyrano hovering near (till yesterday, I'd have said Being the Ricardos and Don't Look Up were next in line; after these reviews, Nightmare Alley's 70 or so on Metacritic is suddenly looking far more formidable). AFI's list comes out today; it'll be interesting to see where they go to fill out the slate.

Not to revive a stale argument, but this, like last year, has only been half a year -- we had more big ticket entries, and a stronger Netflix champ in The Power of the Dog, but we're missing the top-drawer indies like Nomadland and The Father. There are enough good performances to fill decent slates for both years, but we'd have to combine the two vintages to get a truly respectable best picture gallery.

I would agree. I'm inclined to say that 2011 might have been a slightly more deflating year but there were certainly viable options left off the final roster. Beginners, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Separation, even Bridesmaids whatever one might think of it. I've started to wonder if CODA is going to do better than people think. Had the makers of Judas and the Black Messiah held off for a year, I have no doubt that film would improve its 2020 performance with nominations for Best Director, Film Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Sound Design, and maybe Jesse Plemons as well.

I will say this: we might be missing top-drawer indies like Nomadland and The Father, but in its place we do have two Hollywood heavyweight productions (Dune, West Side Story) in its place. I know that it's comparing apples to oranges but at the very least it's nice to see works of that scale connecting, even if more original ventures would be appreciated as well.

[Mister Tee]

Not sure what to make of this one. Reviews seem pretty mixed. I wonder if it can sneak in on star power and timeliness?

I'd say it's below mixed at this point. Many of the reviews are scathing. It may be the film is that bad. But I'd heard a fair amount of decent audience reactions, so it may be some critics were resentful McKay got Oscar nominations last time out, for Vice, despite their general disapproval, and are giving him both barrels this time. It reminds me of when Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde musical managed a long Broadway run despite critical barbs. His next show got reviews so bad you could hardly hold the newspapers they were printed on (dated reference). The common wisdom in the theatre community was that, to be sure he was destroyed, they dragged out the nuclear weapons. This feels a bit like that.

It's starting to seem like the worst possible year to return to a guaranteed 10 best picture nominees; under the last decade's system, we might have finally fallen short of even 8. Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, Belfast, West Side Story and (still) King Richard are the only entries I'd be reasonably sure about, with The Tragedy of Macbeth and Cyrano hovering near (till yesterday, I'd have said Being the Ricardos and Don't Look Up were next in line; after these reviews, Nightmare Alley's 70 or so on Metacritic is suddenly looking far more formidable). AFI's list comes out today; it'll be interesting to see where they go to fill out the slate.

Not to revive a stale argument, but this, like last year, has only been half a year -- we had more big ticket entries, and a stronger Netflix champ in The Power of the Dog, but we're missing the top-drawer indies like Nomadland and The Father. There are enough good performances to fill decent slates for both years, but we'd have to combine the two vintages to get a truly respectable best picture gallery.

[Sabin]

Not sure what to make of this one. Reviews seem pretty mixed. I wonder if it can sneak in on star power and timeliness?

[Mister Tee]

Uncanny. It's like reading the same review twice.

For a second, I thought this meant I screwed up the postings.

[Sonic Youth]

Uncanny. It's like reading the same review twice.

[Mister Tee]

https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/d ... 235127627/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235057450/