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Don't Look Up Reviews

The film suffers in that the human moments aren’t nearly human enough.

Full Review | Jul 18, 2024

["Don't Look Up"] accurately depicts how sensationalism today can stoke panic, fear, and mistrust among the public. Suddenly, science doesn’t matter as much anymore, when it contradicts one’s personal truths.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 4, 2024

I laughed, I laughed some more, and I nearly died at certain points… but through all the satirical material there is true heart to the entire film… as well tense themes that make us look at ourselves. DiCaprio is incredible

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Disaster film is a fitting title because this film was a disaster.

On par with a mediocre SNL sketch.

Don't Look Up hilariously approaches almost every theme worthy of discussion through Adam McKay's satirical screenplay that will undoubtedly leave viewers either incredibly satisfied or extremely triggered.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 25, 2023

Don’t Look Up doesn’t give any space for the viewer to breathe. The film is chaotic and cluttered as only some characters are used to serve a narrative purpose.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2023

Incredibly effective, and it was nice to see the craziness of the world we’re living in portrayed as how it actually feels to live in it; often frustrating but usually ridiculous at how oblivious and indifferent most people are...

Full Review | Jul 19, 2023

Despite some clever gags... the film ultimately runs out of steam and fails to make a deep impact.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 12, 2022

How I learned to stop worrying and love Don’t Look Up? Adam McKay’s film is a savage American political satire and the best since Wag the Dog. In his own words, he timed that shit perfectly.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 21, 2022

Don’t Look Up calls out institutional indifference to impending disaster with relatable and riveting rage thanks to a scorching script and engaged ensemble.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 1, 2022

There’s so much crammed into this movie, and it’s a miracle that (for the most part) McKay manages to hold it all together.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 16, 2022

It's merely stating what everyone has already observed for the past two years, and delivering it with a shit-eating grin.

Full Review | Jul 8, 2022

A satire that at times reaches a revitalizing elegance and at others seems to emulate the level of discourse and debate in social media, television, and family tables: rough, raw, superficial, and even vulgar. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 28, 2022

Initially, the satire has a few funny moments... But I can't remember anything else. For this reason, I can't judge it fairly. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 8, 2022

Although I tend to agree with McKay’s worldview and identify with his cynicism about politics, media culture, and humanity’s general short-sightedness, his methods as a filmmaker rarely convince me. Don’t Look Up might be the exception.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 29, 2022

Like "The Big Short" and "Vice," McKay's latest film pulls no punches in his political commentary, as he continues to make some excellent points but in a primarily condescending manner to his viewers who already received the message long ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 18, 2022

The bulk of the movie is played for gags before the serious stuff kicks in at the end. Its never easy for a director to reconcile such contrasting tones, and McKay is no exception.

Full Review | Mar 29, 2022

Its still sadly rare to see female characters working in STEM given the grace to be imperfect on screen.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Mar 17, 2022

Don’t Look Up ultimately feels like just one more disaster movie: it is far easier—and maybe even more fun—to imagine the apocalyptic end of the world than to imagine how we could live in a radically different way now to prevent it.

Full Review | Mar 14, 2022

Supported by

‘Don’t Look Up’ Review: Tick, Tick, Kablooey

Adam McKay wants you to know that it’s the end of the world and you should absolutely, unequivocally not feel fine. (But do laugh.)

Share full article

By Manohla Dargis

Movies love to menace Earth. It’s human nature. In some of the most plausible doomsday flicks — “Meteor,” “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” — a big space rock threatens annihilation. Usually, if not always happily, someone finally comes to the rescue, though that isn’t the case in the 1951 film “ When Worlds Collide .” Before it makes good on its title, this shocker rockets survivalists on an ark to colonize another planet, which is more or less what Elon Musk has talked about with Space X.

The director Adam McKay is not in the mood for nihilistic flights of fancy. Our planet is too dear and its future too terrifying, as the accelerated pace of species extinction and global deforestation underscore. But humanity isn’t interested in saving Earth, never mind itself, as the recent Glasgow climate summit reminded us. We’re too numb, dumb, powerless and indifferent, too busy fighting trivial battles. So McKay has made “Don’t Look Up,” a very angry, deeply anguished comedy freak out about how we are blowing it, hurtling toward oblivion. He’s sweetened the bummer setup with plenty of yuks — good, bad, indifferent — but if you weep, it may not be from laughing.

Maybe bring hankies, though don’t look for speeches about climate change and global warming. Rather than directly confronting the existential horror of our environmental catastrophe, McKay has taken an allegorical approach in “Don’t Look Up” with a world-destroying comet. Oh sure, on its website, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (yes, it’s real) isn’t worried about near-Earth objects, as they’re called: “No known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years.” Whew. But no matter. The planet is on fire, and so is McKay, who’s embraced his inner Roland Emmerich (“2012”) with a fury by lobbing a great big joke at us.

That joke is definitely on us or soon will be in “Don’t Look Up,” which follows a studiously curated ragtag collection of scientists, politicians, military types, journalists and miscellaneous others who face — or don’t — the threat of a rapidly approaching comet. “I heard there’s an asteroid or a comet or something that you don’t like the looks of,” a visibly bored president of the United States (Meryl Streep) says to some anxious scientists who have been granted an imperial audience. The scientists really don’t like what they’ve seen but the president has other things on her mind, including upcoming elections and the friendly perv she’s trying to get placed on the Supreme Court.

Packed with big names, many locations and ambitiously staged set pieces (and a lot of giddily terrible hairdos), the movie is a busy, boisterous mixed bag, and whether you laugh or not you may still grit your teeth. The story opens in an observatory where Jennifer Lawrence, who plays a grad student, Kate Dibiasky, first spots the comet. Kate’s giddiness over her discovery soon turns to fear when her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (a terrific Leonardo DiCaprio), crunches some numbers and realizes the worst. Together, they pass along the bad news. Enter NASA (Rob Morgan), the military (Paul Guilfoyle) and the White House, which is where the movie’s breeziness takes a turn for the ominous.

Also for the frantic, strident and obvious. McKay’s touch here is considerably blunter and less productive than it has been in a while. In his two previous movies — “ The Big Short ” and “ Vice ” — he blended comedic and dramatic modes to fascinating effect. He experimented with tone and pitch, and played up and down different scales, from the deadly serious to the outrageously silly. It didn’t always work. It proved easier to get into McKay’s groove when you laughed at, say, Margot Robbie explaining subprime mortgages while she’s taking a bubble bath in “The Big Short” than when you watched Christian Bale’s Dick Cheney discussing another American war in “Vice.”

The stakes are higher still in “Don’t Look Up,” which grows progressively more frenetic and wobbly as the inevitability of the catastrophe is finally grasped by even the most ridiculous of the movie’s buffoon-rich cast of characters. One problem is that some of McKay’s biggest targets here — specifically in politics and infotainment — have already reached maximum self-parody or tragedy (or both). What is left to satirically skewer when facts are derided as opinion, flat Earthers attend annual conferences and conspiracy theory movements like QAnon have become powerful political forces?

Even so, McKay keeps swinging hard and fast, and from the start, establishes a sense of visceral urgency with loose, agitated camerawork and brisk editing that fits the ticking-bomb story. He slings zingers and stages bits of comic business, making fine use of funny faces, jumping eyebrows, slow burns and double takes. Part ethnographer, part sociologist, he is especially good at mining the funny-ha-ha, funny-weird spaces in between people. But he’s not always in control of his material, including some cheap shots that slide into witless sexism. Presidential vanity is always a fair target, but too many of the digs directed at Streep’s character play into gender stereotypes.

Streep is a great deal of fun to watch when she’s not unintentionally making you cringe, and Lawrence gives the movie a steady emotional pulse even at its most frantic. McKay’s work with DiCaprio is particularly memorable, partly because Dr. Mindy’s trajectory — from honest, concerned scientist to glib, showboating celebrity — strengthens the movie’s heartbreaking, unspeakable truth: Human narcissism and all that it has wrought, including the destruction of nature, will finally be our downfall. In the end, McKay isn’t doing much more in this movie than yelling at us, but then, we do deserve it.

Don’t Look Up Rated R for violence, language and the apocalypse. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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