Directed by Adam McKay. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell

Widely seen as a parable about the world’s lack of response to the environmental crisis, with a nudge towards the anti-vax movement and the US far right, Don’t Look Up (now screening on Netflix) is more a multi-pronged satire on American culture and politics.

The film’s premise is both simple and utterly devastating: two scientists at Michigan State University — Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiaski (Jennifer Lawrence) — discover that a massive comet is due to impact the earth in just over six months, wiping out all life on the planet. The rest of the film charts their utter failure to convince anyone in power to do anything to head off disaster. “No-one listens to scientists until it’s too late” could be the film’s mantra.

Although Mindy and Dibiaski are whisked off to the White House and are given prime spots on national media, it soon becomes apparent that everyone is too self-absorbed and anxious to impress to take this existential threat seriously. For the President (Meryl Streep), the comet is a convenient distraction from the upcoming mid-term elections and a controversial Supreme Court nominee. To complicate things further, she is enmeshed with an Asperger-ish IT mogul who spouts psychobabble and wants to “capture” the comet to mine its rare minerals for mobile phones.

Our messengers of doom fare no better with the media. Appearing on the trendy TV talk show The Daily Rip (“We keep the bad news light”), their message is buried beneath an avalanche of trivia, and they are pushed into second spot by a tacky celebrity breakup.

As the satire is ladled on ever more thickly, even the two protagonists fail to keep on message. The bearded, nerdy Mindy unaccountably becomes an overnight sex symbol and has an affair with the blonde and botoxed female co-host of The Daily Rip. Kate is derided as a “crazy woman” when she breaks down on national TV and later forms an unlikely alliance with a young evangelical skateboarder.

Amid this welter of grotesque stereotypes thrown up by a culture dying under the weight of its own excesses, the film’s urgent message is effectively buried — and not only in the way intended by the filmmakers. In the end, Don’t Look Up is little more substantial than any other Hollywood disaster movie. It doesn’t even begin to sketch an alternative pathway out of the mess it portrays. Is the film, in the end, as self-indulgent as the crass and corrupt culture it critiques?

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 267 February 2022: 28