Just over two decades ago, a comet cruised too close for comfort to Earth and the world freaked out for a moment. Just enough to produce not one, but two major blockbusters about comet disasters – Deep Impact and Armageddon. The first one made a valiant effort to be scientifically plausible and offer some serious near-apocalyptic drama, the second one was Michael Bay dumb fun extravaganza. Guess which one did better at the box office? That’s right dumb ruled even then.
Anyway, fast-forward to now, get one of the cleverest modern moviemakers and give him a cast of some of the best actors of their respective (as in three different ones) generations and watch cinematic perfection of Don’t Look Up. Maybe perfection is too strong of the word, but it’s pretty freaking close. It’s definitely the smartest movie I’ve seen in ages. Because, you see, the thing is while back in the day the comet hitting the earth might have been the scariest thing, these days it’s the way America as a country would respond to such a threat. And Adam McKay is all too aware of that. For a while now, I’ve been saying that (at least in fiction) satirizing the recent years in the US has been a low hanging fruit, because the modern socio-politics have become a satire onto themselves. As in there’s nothing scarier, less plausible, and morbidly frighteningly funnier than the news. And yet, McKay had managed to satirize the self-satire of a world expertly. With Meryl as an all too familiar POTUS and her cabinet of nepotistic idiots led by her chief of staff son, the highest office in the country lampoons and ignores the scientific proof of the impending tragedy, leading the two scientists who discovered the comet (the frumpy suburban dad Jack Dawson looking his age and the welcome return of J.Law) to desperately try other means of attracting the public attention to the situation. The suburban dad gets sucked into the media circus and the delectable arms of the unrecognizably made-up Cate Blanchett. J.Law gets appropriately outraged and thus mocked on social media and turned into a joke. And yes, that is an excellent commentary of the gender dichotomy in public spotlight. Meryl’s a delight, as always. If you thought she made unlikable charming in the Iron Lady, just watch her here. Also, watch her son, a self-described chief of staff by with the dragon tattoo, a smarmy entitled jerkoff with an Oedipal compex the size of Texas, cast perfectly if going by looks alone. There’s also an interested party of a tech mogul, played wildly by the always terrific Rylance who disappears into this bizarre soft-spoken nightmare of a character. And the gruff awesomeness of Ron Perlman playing a proper American heroic general (a one-man stand-in for the US jingoistic gun-totting military compex) who would absolutely blast this comet to smithereens if permitted, all while spewing out racist sexist gobleyook that gets promptly excused by the powers that be as him being from a different generation. There’s even a surprisingly tolerable Timothee Chalamet, for the kiddies. This cast is as epic as it is all over the place. All in all, without giving too much away, this is an ingenious and frighteningly accurate commentary on the modern American politics and the morally bankrupt idiotic ignorant world in general. The world presented in Don’t Look Up is a world not necessarily worth saving but it’s well worth watching. From its alarming start to its hilarious finish art imitates life all too perfectly. Awesome. Might be one of the best movies of the year.
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