Review: Don't Look Up with its star-studded cast is a disappointing satire

2 stars

Satire faces some major pitfalls. One is that it tends to preach to the converted and alienate or be ignored by everyone else. Another that it doesn't really accomplish anything (see point one) unless you think smug self-righteousness is a worthy result. Even if you agree with the point of view, it's sometimes hard not to feel your intelligence is being underestimated and insulted.

Director and co-writer Adam McKay's new film too often falls into these traps, and despite intermittently amusing moments and some sharp observations, it's too heavy-handed, repetitive and indulgent to be a clear success.

At the start of Don't Look Up, astronomy PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) alerts her mentor, Dr Randall Mindy, to her "terrifying discovery" - a comet is heading for Earth and in six months will strike the planet and destroy all life.

You've heard this kind of scenario before. But here, it's used as an allegory about people and governments' reactions to the dangers of climate change.

It's not the most apt analogy. The threat of an approaching meteor and the need to obliterate it obvious to anybody - where's Bruce Willis when you need him? Climate change, by comparison, can feel like a vaguer, further-away problem, and it's one that's much more complicated to address.

But to return to the story: when Kate and Randall try to alert the government to the crisis, they find it hard to be taken seriously. They're not Ivy League academics, their jargon is hard to understand, and besides, President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) is focused on the midterm elections and worries about how the bad news might affect the results.

Eventually, the scientists - with colleague Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) seem to be making some headway, but while the handsome Randall becomes a media darling - and in the process begins to forget about what matters - Kate is viciously ridiculed and denounced online after her frustration and anger at the lack of action gets the better of her during a TV appearance.

Will the involvement of tech billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) be a help or a hindrance in facing the threat?

At more than two and a quarter hours, Don't Look Up is long and feels it. Well-known actors keep turning up - Timothee Chalamet comes in late as Yule, a skateboarding slacker with an unexpected side - and it seems McKay felt obliged to give each of them a turn in the spotlight (some more than was necessary). Streep seems a bit too self-amused as the heedless president. Rylance as the billionaire is given more attention than necessary. And Ariana Grande's character is one of several that could have been deleted with no great loss.

The characters and the way they are written and performed vary too: some seem to be played straight while others are obvious buffoons, so the film's tone moves awkwardly from black satire to broader comedy.

Towards the end the film seems to be aiming for sincerity and spirituality (surely the latter is a worthwhile target: where is God supposed to be?) but the poignancy doesn't quite feel earned. The darker tone returns during the credits (stay till the end).

Despite the flaws, there are things that work. The hollow chirpiness of TV talk shows, the fickle power of the internet and the cult of celebrity are and easy targets, but they can still raise some laughs. And there's certainly plenty of talent on display (though the special effects aren't state of the art).

Director and co-writer Adam McKay was more successful looking at the financial crisis caused by the housing bubble in The Big Short.

There, what had happened was so complicated to most people it needed untangling (and even then was hard to fathom) and the film did that with humour and verve.

With climate change, you don't need to be across all the scientific details to be aware there's a problem that needs a solution: we know that already. That might be part of the film's point, but it's obvious. Oversimplifying things doesn't help.

For an end-of-the-world satire, Dr Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is shorter, sharper and more consistent in its tone and dark comedy even if its Cold War setting might feel dated.