Note from Espinof

'Don't look up' arrives as the last great Netflix film premiere of this 2021 that is about to come to an end. With a cast full of Hollywood stars and a most striking premise, Adam McKay's new job has everything to become another hit on that streaming platform.

What it will not achieve is unanimity, since it is a film that is dividing both critics and audiences, something logical to a certain extent as it is a work that says a lot about today's society. But it is one thing to be very inspired by what is criticized and another to be very inspired by the way of doing it. That's where the problems arise for a movie that both goes overboard and falls short in its satire.

Laughing at today's society

It is not difficult to find parallels between the actions carried out in 'Don't look up' about the inexorable arrival of a comet that will destroy life on Earth with other crises that we have already much more assimilated, such as climate change , where denialism has always had its share, or that of the coronavirus.

All this trying to lead to the absurd, something that works quite well in its initial bars, since the political power despises the information because it is simply not convenient for them to know it. After all, no one is going to willingly accept a (almost) 100% chance that they will die in a matter of months.

In the previous few minutes we had several clues indicating that we were going to see a film that handled the idea of ​​the end of the world in a very different way from other productions such as 'Armageddon' or 'Deep Impact', to mention two works with the same threat and complementary approaches, more playful in Michael Bay's film and much more dramatic in Mimi Leder's.

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Here we opt for a style that fits with what has been seen in the latest works -although more 'The Big Bet' than 'The Vice of Power'- by Adam McKay, with occasional escapes towards an absurdity that is more reminiscent of his first feature films. The result is a bit odd, as he does point out problems very well and laughs at them, but does so in a bit hasty manner, as if he wants to jump too fast to the next nonsense he wants to point out.

Less fun than expected

That's where I think 'Don't Look Up' could have worked better with another cast more accustomed to working in a comic key. And it's funny, because I think of the film's protagonists in isolation and I can't say anything bad about them, but I'm also aware that Jonah Hill is the one who seems most comfortable in the record that McKay proposes, while the rest they fit well into what the film asks of them in terms of representation - in some cases it couldn't be more obvious what their big reference is in the real world - but then it often feels like they do it in a very measured way when the film itself tends to be more zany.

That doesn't take away from the fact that there are very funny moments, from more punctual and direct jokes like everything related to Ron Perlman to others with a longer journey like Jennifer Lawrence's character's obsession with not understanding how a high office would charge her for something that it was free or the tendency to hood the characters by the authorities, but there are also situations that are simply very unfunny. Although there I recognize that the fact that sometimes fiction does not surpass reality can play against it.

There I would have appreciated a little more measure to let the situations he proposes breathe better. Watching 'Don't Look Up', I couldn't help but remember 'The Smokescreen', a stupendous satire too forgotten today that also took an eye on something very recent -in this case, the sex scandal between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky- to play with a crazy one and get out of the stake.

In that case, it was essential to give the producer played by Dustin Hoffman the right development so that he could function as a great common thread for all the crazy things that were happening in that invented war, but here there is nothing really comparable. Yes, Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio would come to fulfill that function, but they also end up getting lost in that overaccumulation of ideas that 'Don't look up' boasts of.

Lights and Shadows of 'Don't Look Up'

However, there are specific moments in which McKay comes dangerously close to hitting the target, but he does not do so because he pays special attention to that specific subject, but because he makes it sound so dangerously familiar that this tendency to excess already it's enough for the satire to work. Here the subtle is not interested in any case, perhaps that is why the more absurd something is -I am thinking, for example, of that first post-credits scene as a conclusion to something that we had been told before-, the more shine it has because it already was. so serial

In this way, the bad temper that 'Don't look up' has passing through our faces that our distrust of science is unjustified and that we have become a society that prioritizes the banal over everything else ends up fading. Sometimes because it is too evident and others because of little development. The blow towards what laughs is there, because the objective is very clear, but what could be an unforgettable slap ends up being little more than a slap.

In a nutshell

All in all, 'Don't Look Up' is a movie worth watching. I am clear that to a part of the viewers it will seem like a brilliant satire, while others will end up desperate for the approach taken. I stay in between, I see and applaud what he tries, but the execution is not exactly the best.