One review on 29 Dec 2021

USA 2021

Running time: 135 mins

Don't Look Up

Director : Adam McKay 

Setting: USA
Summary: Satire on our civilisation's response to climate change.Sort of.


Cast:

  • Leonardo DiCaprio  Prof.Minty
  • Meryl Streep  President
  • Jennifer Lawrence  Kate Dibiasky (PhD student discovers the comet)


Aspect Ratio: 2.39 Widescreen

Colour: Colour

Sound: Dolby digital

Camera: 35mm

Tech Notes: Camera : 35mm. Dolby digital


Film Category

First Seen: Wed 29th Dec 2021
Catalogued: 30th Dec 2021

Synopsis

Two scientists (Leo di Caprio and Jenifer Lawrence) from Minesota discover a comet heading directly for earth and due to impact in 6 months. A republican president (Meryl Streep) is more concerned about the mid-term elections than doing anything. They attempt to go on tv to break the news on a morning chat programme but find their concerns trivialised and sanitised. 

Facing a political scandal the president decides to go public and appears to be doing something, but at the last minute the mission to deflect the comet is subverted by a tech billionaire who discovers that the comet is made of rare-earth minerals and hatches a plan to break it into pieces and harvest them.

Meanwhile the scientists are despairing. Eventually it does not end well.

Reviews

by rogerco on Wed 29th Dec 2021 Streamed proj @ home

Entertaining, but slightly misses its mark

Summary

Good fun in lots of ways, but ultimately a comet strike is a singular event whereas the collapse of Gaia will be billions of distinct events

Full review

Some of the dialogue a bit inaudible - an increasingly common complaint, are my ears fading I wonder. An entertaining riff on political expediency, media dumbing down, and tech hyperbole as the Prof and Kate have to deal and sometimes compromise with various forces with vested interests in not telling the truth.

The comeupannce of the tech billionaire both when his mission fails and in the coda 22000 years in the future when they arrive at a new planet only to discover they are a food source to the creatures there is satisfying

Ultimately though as a satire on the response to climate change it doesn't really work as eco-climate collapse doesn't have the salience that a comet appearing in the sky has.