Don't Look Up (2021) * *

Directed by:  Adam McKay

Starring:  Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Rob Morgan, Meryl Streep, Melanie Lynskey, Tyler Perry, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance, Ron Perlman, Timothee Chalamet, Himesh Patel, Ariana Grande

This is a cast which belongs in a better movie.   Today's media and political climate is ripe for satire, but it's also difficult to parody something which is already a parody of itself.   Don't Look Up seems more like quotation than satire.   If you judge how millions view COVID-19 as a hoax or a sham, how far away from the truth is Don't Look Up?   It's scarcely ahead of the facts and may be even a tad behind them.    

Don't Look Up stars Jennifer Lawrence as astronomer Kate Dibiasky, who discovers a comet which according to her calculations later confirmed by her boss Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio), will hit Earth in six months and fourteen days.   Since the comet is roughly nine kilometers wide, the impact will kill all life on Earth as we know it.   Randall and Kate are granted an audience with President Orlean (Streep) and her Chief-of-Staff doofus son Jason, but their discovery is pooh-poohed by the president and tabled until a scandal involving her hand-picked Supreme Court nominee passes.   Oh, and midterms are in three weeks and we wouldn't want to bum out voters by breaking news about a comet which will kill us all in six months.   

Absolutely stunned that the President and her administration couldn't care less about impending doom, Randall and Kate take their message to a national talk show hosted by a couple of empty-headed, banter-spouting hosts (Perry and Blanchett).   Kate's blunt declarations of the end of the world are met with scorn on social media, while Randall's passable good looks are a hit with the targeted show demographic and Cate Blanchett's character.   When Randall finally explodes with a Howard Beale-type speech near the end, I couldn't help but realize this was done better by Peter Finch.  

Don't Look Up, with very few exceptions where a chuckle is elicited, isn't a funny or particularly wicked satire.   It doesn't even work up enough effort to be angry or outraged.  The plot itself sets up easy targets which McKay and company attack not even gleefully.  It is content to be wacky.  The performances are serviceable with underwritten characters.   We spend more time waiting for the first appearance of all of the stars promised in the opening credits than we do caring about who they're playing.  By the time Timothee Chalamet shows up with his superfluous character, we forgot he was even supposed to be in the movie.

The best way to watch a movie like Don't Look Up is to watch Network instead.