★ ★ ★ ★

Don’t Look Up is an apocalypse comedy, set in the modern era that puts the viewer face-to-face with some of today’s toughest realities. I began watching this film the week it came out, a depressing evening in December 2021. However, after about an hour of the film, I had a feeling I knew its end and during the midst of my own personal anxieties, that wasn’t an ending I felt emotionally available to watch.

Flash forward to June of 2023, the day after I finished my last assignment for my Masters program I decided I was ready to finish watching it. It was emotional, it was honest, it stared the viewer in the face.

I enjoyed the playful mix of characters, some caricatures of reality, and how they each brought a different element to the screen. They each decided to face this new reality in a different way, through a different coping mechanism (sexual advances, screaming at the world, peace with one’s maker, denial, overcompensation, etc). The ties to our current reality are obvious, at times on the nose. Many viewers commented on the “Look Up” vs. “Don’t Look Up” war as a metaphor for vaccines and anti-vaxers, in a post-COVID era. I felt the most on the nose comparison was climate change, the approaching comet being of course the changing climate and escalation of climate disasters.

I really didn’t understand Ariana Grande’s cameo in the story. It felt out of context and while it was parody on life itself and stardom, it didn’t feel like it fit so much as the rest of the story. But then again, I’ve never been much of a fan of hers, so that could be my own bias clouding my judgement.

Overall, the film wasn’t exactly thought provoking as it was enticingly depressing and evocative.