As a well-acted and entertaining farcical comedy, 'Don't Look Up' works just fine. As any sort of relevant, edgy commentary on climate change or anything else, it completely misses the mark.
In order to be socially edgy; in order to provide allegorical commentary to a current crisis facing our society, shouldn’t a film include lead characters who actually reflect those we currently see in our society? Instead of endeavoring to provide that, “Don’t Look Up” appears to be stuck in 1992.
Shortly after I first started contributing at Forbes.com in 2012, the oil and gas industry became concerned about the fact that another great generational actor, Matt Damon, was starring in a film calledSet in the Marcellus Shale region, the movie - which also starred another outstanding actor, John Krasinski - was designed to portray the natural gas industry there in a bad light.
But then, “Promised Land” was released and a) wasn’t nearly as uniformly negative towards the industry as everyone had feared, and b) completely tanked at the box office, mainly because it was just a really lousy movie in general, one of the few stinkers Damon has ever filmed. As an effort to damage the industry and its reputation, it turned out to be a big nothing-burger. The industry’s concerns about the film turned out to have been wildly overblown.
I think the same can be said for “Don’t Look Up,” but for different reasons. This is not a bad movie at all - in fact, my wife and I both found it pretty entertaining as a farcical comedy. The acting is fantastic, naturally, the writing is only decent, but it does provide some very entertaining moments. Not the best movie I’ve seen in years, but not even remotely close to the worst.
But this film completely fails as an allegory to anything, climate change or otherwise, and that is solely because the writers and producers lacked the courage to buck Hollywood’s prevailing culture and make a film that could have been truly edgy and relevant. One friend said, after seeing it, that it is likely that the current cancel culture permeating Hollywood and the rest of our society might mean that making such a film is not even possible anymore.
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