Don't Look Up (2021) Review
SnarkAI Score: 80/100
“It feels far too realistic for satire.”
TL;DR: tldr: Depressingly good, and achingly familiar to Ben Elton's novel Stark in a lot of respects, particularly the epilogue. The sense of stress and frustration — trying to convince a stubborn unwilling audience of something self-evident — is painfully relatable. Ariana Grande continues to impress with her self-aware sense of humour; Leo's love interest being age-appropriate is funnier than it should be. 'He's a platinum Eagle level donor to the campaign. He has full clearance' is painful in its credibility. The Art Director discovered close-cropped shots and loved them a little too much. Feels far too realistic for satire.
Depressingly good, though achingly familiar to Ben Elton's outstanding novel Stark in a lot of respects particularly the epilogue.
Seth Rogan's almost type-cast as a smug self-important douche you are supposed to hate. It would be good for him to expand his horizons and surprise us, like Matthew McConaughey did remarkably with True Detective. Ariana Grande continues to impress with her self-aware sense of humor. There's also hilarity to the fact Leo's wife and his girlfriend in this film are more age-appropriate than the women Leo dates in real life. She's likely older than the mothers of many of Leo's girlfriends.
The sense of stress and frustration comes through, familiar to anyone who's tried to convince an unwilling audience of something you know to be true, to be self-evident almost, and yet to be facing the stubborn stares of people who just don't want to agree.
It's refreshing to see people actually reacting to an extinction-level event, rather than the normal stoic heroics. People panic and flail and make bad decisions, its very human in its storytelling.
The line "He's a platinum Eagle level donor to the campaign. He has full clearance" is painful in its credibility in a Trump-era America.
My only visual complaint is that it looks like the Art Director just discovered close-cropped shots and loves them.