One third into Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, the camera cuts to a shot of Earth suspended in a field of stars. From my seat in the theater I felt like Grand Moff Tarkin standing in the control room of the Death Star as it prepared to destroy the peaceful planet of Alderaan with its superlaser.​ Fitting, I realized, for a movie whose entire premise concerns the destruction of Earth, the planet Lucas used as inspiration for Alderaan.​However, unlike the political utopia destroyed by the Death Star, Don’t Look Up’s Earth is a self-obsessed and politically corrupt space-rock that faces the inevitable impact of a meteor the size of Mt. Everest.​

 

The movie follows astronomer Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and graduate student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) through their trials and tribulations as they try to warn the world about its impending doom. From the opening shot, it plays as a thinly-veiled and painfully obvious metaphor about climate crisis and society's reluctance to address it. ​The ensemble also brings together Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Rob Morgan, Mark Rylance and Ariana Grande in a star-studded cast that reaches for the stars but doesn’t make it through the stratosphere.

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After identifying the meteor's collision course, Mindy and Dibiasky call the authorities and, within hours, are on their way to the White House. This all takes place before the title sequence. 

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For the rest of the movie, DiCaprio uses Dr. Mindy as a vessel to bellow his own environmentalist ideologies and Lawrence offers a credible performance that becomes the heart of the movie. The script forces Meryl Streep to underperform as President Orlean – a stand in for the Trump/Hillary hybrid McKay tries to create – and the character ends up bringing an aloof naivety to the Oval Office when obsessive zeal would have been more convincing and real.

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Mark Rylance stands out in his role as an Elon Musk/Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg tech mogul; and, in a wasted casting, Blanchett plays a one note news anchor whose only obsessions are her ratings and a newly popular, freshly shaven Dr. Mindy. By the time the credits roll, the film becomes an unsubtle caricature of the people and pitfalls cannibalizing contemporary culture (say that 10 times fast).

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Even with a 138-minute runtime, it still feels as though McKay rushes to cram all his satirical ideas into the plot, as if the world really does end tomorrow and this is his last chance to preach about society’s shortcomings. With the help of his editor, the movie becomes a kinetic volley of ideas, from climate change and big tech to political inaction and sheeple culture. By moving so fast, the script never digs below the surface of its allegories and most of the material fizzles before it hits.

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More often than not, the movie uses dialogue as exposition for these allegories — a big “Did you get it?” to the audience. But we already do get it because McKay’s message is not a revolutionary one; in fact, you could save two hours and watch this two-minute SNL skit.

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From my seat in the theater, I saw people walk out before Mindy and Dibiasky even reached the White House. I realized, after the movie ended a few hours later, that McKay’s narrative perpetuates its own downfall: the people who will listen are already listening, and the people who don’t want to, won’t. 

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And, yet, in spite of itself, Don’t Look Up still hits its target like a meteor hitting Earth; that for every bumblebee and nurturing hippo, every humpback whale and flowering daisy, every hummingbird and un-contacted tribe, the decisions made by the upper echelons of the human race hold in their balance the fate of all life. With that said, I hope there's no meteor on our horizon.