Don’t Look Up Netflix Review: Film of the Year

Nick Clement details an outstanding experience with this Don’t Look Up Netflix review.

Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth.

This is very easily my favorite film of the year. Nothing even remotely comes close. Here’s my Don’t Look Up Netflix review.

Sure, I’ve seen some great stuff, and will likely see a few more that are of excellent quality, but for me as a viewer, this is THE ONE. I’m a sucker for movies that take a big fat dump all over America, and Adam McKay’s brilliant Don’t Look Up empties its thematic bowels all over at least 50% of the country, and I think you can guess which 50% that consists of.

This is the type of black comedy satire where it’s so funny that it’s not physically possible to laugh out loud while viewing; you just say to yourself in your head: “Damn. That’s absolutely hilarious. And true.”

McKay doesn’t give a f*** about anyone or anything – he’s got an angry, bitter view of the world and the scary direction we’re all headed in, and he’s not out to win any new fans or to try and convert the rubes.

Nope – he’s pissed off – and he’s not gonna take it anymore. And yes, the movie’s big and furious “Network moment” is ferocious and totally earned and written with serious gusto.

McKay won his Oscar and made tens of millions of dollars, so he’s earned his right to have his say about what he wants, and I congratulate Netflix for giving him all of the money and creative leeway that he needed in order to pull of this poison hearted miracle. This is the movie the world deserves right now.

Over the last decade, McKay, who was once known for his idiotically funny comedies (Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights) decided to get really fucking serious (yet remain playful – and that’s the thing – his sense of tonal balance is off the charts), and from where I sit on the couch, it’s the best film-world switch-up that’s happened in a century.

His magnificent financial collapse drama, The Big Short, was his entry-point in making sociopolitical entertainment that still had verbal bite and caustic wit, and he took his game to the next logical step with Vice, his blistering indictment of Dick Cheney’s dangerous and delusional time spent as Vice President. And now, he basically serves up a more polished and refined Idiocracy 2, and for that, I’ll be eternally thankful.

The last two years have been a truly sad state of affairs, and this work was clearly born from that wreckage.

I’m not going to spoil anything about this blistering piece of work. There’s an extinction-level comet coming, it’s plain as day, you can even see it in the sky with your own two eyes, we’re all going to die in six months, but a certain section of the country is too pre-occupied with staring directly up their own assholes and spouting off lunatic conspiracy theories, rather than listening to hard science and taking the imminent threat seriously.

Sound like a scenario you’ve heard before?

This is the sort of movie that one half of America is going to hate, a quarter of its intended target audience will pretend to hate but secretly love, and then the other quarter will fall in love with it at first sight. I’m in the final camp.

What can you say about the embarrassment of riches that comprises the ensemble cast? Leonardo DiCaprio has always shined doing comedy, and here he leads the busy charge with disheveled, manic force as “the world’s sexiest scientist.”

Jennifer Lawrence is her usual plucky-self as the young astronomer who discovers the comet, and crushes it when it comes to her character’s hilarious fixation on an otherwise unimportant life moment. Jonah Hill is a national treasure; he’s obscenely gifted.

The sly Rob Morgan gets to tell one of the best on-screen fart jokes ever. Meryl Streep was having too much fun playing the Psycho-in-Chief, and get the hell out of town with the maximum Mark Rylance power – “I have to go to the bathroom now…” Everyone else in the extended supporting cast nails their assignment; they WANTED it on their resumes. 

You also get stylish and nimble Linus Sandgren behind the camera, and Hank Corwin’s customarily jittery editing keeps you appropriately glued and on edge.

Make sure you watch the mid-credits zinger, which contains a priceless, time-expanding jump cut, and then there’s one more asinine bit after the final credits have rolled.

This is a deliciously nasty satire, truly taking aim at our deranged culture, and everyone who appeared in it is a better human being for doing so.

Don’t Look Up, Netflix, CHECK IT OUT!

Because by taking part in a film like this, you’re showing your true colors as a human being, and you’re in line with the millions of creative decisions that took place in order for the picture to get made.

Like the planet-killer that’s central to the film’s casually nihilistic narrative, something special like Don’t Look Up only comes around once in a while.

Don’t Look Up Netflix review by Nick Clement