E21 | FLIM - Look up

<p>In a grand science fiction tradition, "Don't Look Up" uses a disaster-movie framework as a metaphor for a reality-based crisis, with a huge comet hurtling toward Earth as a surrogate for indifference to addressing climate change. Yet this star-studded, extremely provocative satire at times veers off course itself, partially undermining its admirable qualities with the broadness of its tone.</p><p><br>At its core, writer-director Adam McKay (who wrote the script with journalist/activist David Sirota) delivers a very pointed treatise on the dysfunctional state of current politics and media, in which everyone is so myopic as to be unable to focus on an existential threat. The title reflects the inevitable endpoint of that, with a bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach to impending doom.</p><p>The window into that absurdity comes when astronomy professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his PhD. student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover the comet, whose trajectory will lead to a direct collision with Earth in a little over six months.</p><p>Understandably alarmed, their findings quickly reach the White House, where the president (Meryl Streep, poorly served by the ridiculousness of her character) is too preoccupied with her endangered Supreme Court pick to focus on what Randall describes as an extinction-level event. After fruitless back and forth, she concludes that they'll "sit tight and assess" the situation.</p><p>From there, "Don't Look Up" is off to the races with a scathing indictment of everything about our media and political ecosystem, from the happy-talk news show (anchored by Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett, standing out as especially self-absorbed TV anchors) to websites preoccupied with traffic and social-media memes.</p><p>McKay and Sirota deliver a spot-on attack on how easily distracted people (especially in media) are, fixating on Kate's hair and clothes and ignoring the substance of her message.</p><p>The attempts to make that point, however, careen wildly in different directi