well, it’s certainly not supposed to give you joy

“The pan­dem­ic is like a tv show you thought was can­celed, but then it got picked up by Net­flix.”
—Jim Gaffi­gan
                              

Based on the trail­er alone, Don’t Look Up (2021) seems like a movie I’m ei­ther gonna love or ab­solute­ly hate.

But all I could think was

Don’t look at Jen­nifer Lawrence’s ter­ri­ble hair­cut.

 

So,
if you’ve watched and liked Net­flix’ Don’t Look Up (DLU), maybe dis­con­tin­ue read­ing this be­cause I don’t want to yuck your yum.
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I’ll add sev­er­al more el­lipses to give you a chance to exit this post.
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Oh dear. I have made the mis­take of notic­ing that Adam McK­ay made DLU. Must keep an open mind, must keep an open mind … At least it’s not di­rect­ed by David O. Rus­sell … I tell my­self.
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There’s still 45 min­utes to go in this movie and all I can think about is how Net­flix can­celled GLOW and MST3K.
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Al­right, be pre­pared for some prime Emi­ly com­men­tary here.

This movie is ter­ri­ble.

Which is frus­trat­ing to say be­cause, for fuck’s sake, there’s a lot of po­ten­tial in this movie but it’s so ridicu­lous­ly heavy hand­ed.

This isn’t even low hang­ing fruit. The fruit fell off the tree, rolled down the hill, and fell into a lake be­low sea lev­el.

DLU is as sub­tle as play­ing a Bösendor­fer with a sledge­ham­mer.

It’s like the com­bi­na­tion of a Fun­ny or Die sketch that lands square­ly on the “die” end of the spec­trum, an SNL sketch that was cut – not for time but be­cause it wasn’t fun­ny – and a Black Mir­ror episode. (No qual­i­fi­er there since Black Mir­ror is in love with the smell of its own shit and is also, for the most part, ab­solute­ly ter­ri­ble.)
 

It’s also su­per hi­lar­i­ous to me that (spoil­er alert, but trust me, it re­al­ly doesn’t mat­ter that you know this) the so­lu­tion pre­sent­ed in Ar­maged­don (1998) is sug­gest­ed in earnest here in this film as a way to pre­vent to­tal an­ni­hi­la­tion.

I’m no sci­en­tist (please laugh at me) but some­thing in­stinc­tive­ly tells me that blast­ing a comet with a nuke just sim­ply wouldn’t work for a whole myr­i­ad of rea­sons.

Not that the Unit­ed States wouldn’t try it (and you KNOW the Unit­ed States WOULD) but (and any real sci­en­tists out there, please feel free to prove me wrong) there’s no way that would do any­thing ex­cept fuck us worse.
 

I have no idea how McK­ay man­aged to sell so many A‑list, Acad­e­my Award-win­ning, well-re­spect­ed ac­tors and ac­tress­es on mak­ing this film, but I can only as­sume they went along with it be­cause ei­ther he has ma­jor dirt on them that would com­plete­ly de­stroy their ca­reers and per­son­al lives, or, they all owe a LOT of mon­ey to the IRS.

Or both.

For ex­am­ple, the en­tire seg­ment with Ar­i­ana Grande as Ri­ley Bina singing “Just Look Up” should have end­ed up on the cut­ting room floor. Like, Ar­i­ana Grande IS mak­ing fun of her­self in this movie and I hon­est­ly don’t think she’s smart enough to re­al­ize it.

 

Adam McK­ay per­fect­ly en­cap­su­lates the ag­ing, proud­ly jad­ed Gen-Xer who is right on the cusp of prac­ti­cal­ly be­ing a boomer: He wants to blame cell phones and so­cial me­dia for all of our col­lec­tive ills while at the same time pay­ing un­end­ing homage to tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments and the sci­en­tif­ic process.

The movie  L I T E R A L L Y  men­tions how im­por­tant the sci­en­tif­ic process is and name drops com­put­ers as be­ing cru­cial to our de­vel­op­ment as a species and our un­der­stand­ing of the world, while at the same time fail­ing to ac­knowl­edge that cell phones are sim­ply just the next stage in the evo­lu­tion of com­put­ers.

Cell phones are noth­ing more than com­put­ers that fit in our pock­ets. And every new tech­nol­o­gy, from fire to the wheel to the print­ing press to elec­tric­i­ty to the au­to­mo­bile to “talkies” to tele­vi­sion to the in­ter­net and be­yond, has had pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive im­pacts on hu­man­i­ty.

To lay all of the blame for where we are at right low square­ly on so­cial me­dia and cell phones is lazy old hat that amounts to lit­tle more than a ⚪️ dude yelling about how great things were when we all talked to each oth­er and read news­pa­pers and drank from the gar­den hose.

The end of the world is told en­tire­ly through the per­spec­tive of col­or-of-pa­per peo­ple. There are some very tiny gems hid­den here or there to be found but they are buried un­der an Ever­est (and comet) sized pile of to­tal garbage.
 

McK­ay start­ed his film ca­reer with a movie that both in­formed us, and hi­lar­i­ous­ly, bril­liant­ly sat­i­rized the sen­sa­tion­al­ism and sex­ism of 1970s lo­cal news broad­casts.

In con­trast, DLU is an al­most 150 minute ex­po­si­tion about three things and three things only: How bad­ly he wants us to know that he feels Hillary and Trump were one in the same per­son, how he thinks so­cial me­dia and cell phone us­age are large­ly to blame for most of society’s ills, and how the me­dia pro­hibits us from know­ing what’s re­al­ly go­ing on.

It verges on con­spir­a­to­r­i­al and would ac­tu­al­ly be laugh­able if it weren’t so ham-fist­ed and pa­thet­ic.

A lot of peo­ple sink them­selves into their phones not be­cause they’re ig­nor­ing re­al­i­ty, but be­cause they know ex­act­ly what is go­ing on and de­spite do­ing every­thing they were told would make a dif­fer­ence, it hasn’t, and they’re in­cred­i­bly de­pressed and just try­ing to con­nect with oth­ers who feel the same way as they do and don’t know what to do about it.

That Adam McK­ay hired a bunch of ex­treme­ly wealthy celebri­ties to lec­ture us about ig­nor­ing cli­mate change while we stare at our phones is just down­right in­sult­ing.

I grew up at­tend­ing as­sem­blies where young adults born around McKay’s time rapped at us about the im­por­tance of turn­ing off the wa­ter when we brushed our teeth and clip­ping the rings that held soda cans to­geth­er be­cause it was OUR re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (all us sev­en and eight year old kids) to save the plan­et.

Just like how only I could pre­vent for­est fires – an iron­ic state­ment in hind­sight be­cause for­est fires are in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to cli­mate change.

Turns out that at the ex­act same time, all the adults in charge were vot­ing in politi­cians who were tear­ing down en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions and en­act­ing laws that would let cor­po­ra­tions get away with mur­der.

So while DLU is very ob­vi­ous­ly an al­le­go­ry for the past ten years, but it’s also at least ten years too late.

There is noth­ing orig­i­nal or sub­ver­sive about this film.
 

There is a char­ac­ter in this film who is a painful­ly ob­vi­ous amal­ga­ma­tion of Jobs, Fau­ci, Be­zos, Musk, ZUCK, and Biden, and it’s so god­damn clum­sy that if it had a slap-off with gi­ant-hand Dave Grohl from the Ever­long video, it would win hard­er than the Chica­go Bulls in their ’95–96 sea­son.
 

I don’t care for Jen­nifer Lawrence as a per­son, but it’s only fair for me to ac­knowl­edge that she is eas­i­ly the best part of this film and her char­ac­ter, along with DiCaprio’s wife (be­low), are the only two lik­able char­ac­ters in the whole two hours and eigh­teen min­utes.

 

I can hon­est­ly say this is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

And I’ve seen Cats (2019), Sil­ver Lin­ings Play­book (2012), Isle of Dogs (2018), and Bel­la (2006).

Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been drink­ing but I’m also con­flat­ing scenes from DLU with Pop­star: Nev­er Stop Nev­er Stop­ping (2016), and even though I keep re­mind­ing my­self that they are com­plete­ly sep­a­rate movies, I’m still laugh­ing about that sce­nario.

“I used to think that want­i­ng to save the plan­et made me gay. But now I don’t see col­or, ’cause we’re all one race …”
—Connor4Real
 

TO SUM UP

I liked DLU much bet­ter the first three times I saw it:

When it was called Dr. Strangelove (1964), then when it was called On the Beach (1959), and fi­nal­ly, when it was called Melan­cho­lia (2011).

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2021 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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