Movie Review: Don't Look Up!

Look Up!

Every movie has a message. Yes, every movie. Be it comedy, horror, romance, thrillers, etc. There's always an underlying message in the movies.

Sometimes these messages are lost to the audience as they focus on other aspects of the movie and other times people get it.

For Don't Look Up the message was glaring. It was factual, real, and dreadful. So, what was the big message?

Movie Recap

(Spoilers ahead)

Amidst celebrations of realising a comet, two scientists, Dr Mindy (Leo) and student Dibiasky (J.Law) realise that the comet isn't just passing or hanging out with other Astro bodies, but actually heading for Earth.

They scramble to get the word out but no one takes them seriously. The government goes against them and sells lies to the people. The world is destroyed and there's only one person left on Earth.

Quite a recap, don't you think?

At the point where they discovered the comet heading for Earth, you'll want to sigh and scream "I knew it. It's a regular disaster movie," but boy does it get complicated.

From their orbital calculations, the comet was to hit in six months some days and some minutes

Let's just stick with six months.

Joy turns to sadness, then fear, dread and comfort—in that order. They begin to reach out and raise alarms like is expected when something wants to wipe out Earth.

But here's the catch; no one takes them serious

Do you remember Independence Day and how the president and Secretary of Defence and Joint Chiefs and top scientist, staring Globlum, came together to figure out the aliens' weaknesses and stop the world from being invaded?

Well, nothing of such happened in this. The president and 99% of the population took them for granted. 

Sad, right?

I loved this movie. That should be obvious already. I loved it because as I watched it I saw my country people and how they use humour and clown about the most important things.

I saw the government taking advantage of dire situations for their own gain hiding them under economic liberation.

I saw the rich having backup plans and not giving a hoot about what happens to the masses.

I saw them focusing on the wrong trends and pursuing irrelevant issues.

And I saw the masses blinded by the lies of the government so much so that when they broke out, it was all too late.

The Scenes

People have this bias of taking movies with high-ranking celebrities very seriously, though it doesn't always work out. 

You can check out Valentine's Day and you'll see what I mean.

But this one was different. The celebrities were included there to get people's attention. The cast was stellar: Meryl Streep, Leonardo Dicaprio, Tyler Perry, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Timotheé Chalamet, Ariana Grande, my gosh was it huge.

And gladly they didn't disappoint. They had room to improv (it's not improve) which they did and it was so comically sad.

When the first missile launch failed. Yes, the president later conceded to have a missile launch after her nudes came out publicly. She needed something else to look like the knight in shining armour.

So, after it failed and the creepy sounding Steve Jobs guy talked about mining the comet for money, I almost died.

Seriously!

A whole comet!

It looked so cool on paper and the explanations made sense. They just didn't consider "what if". There wasn't any contingency.

Actually, there were contingencies for the rich only. And not just any rich person. Seriously rich fellows from the oil and gas and tech sector.

Way to go rich folks. 👎🏽

Dr Mindy, the head scientist, starts out wanting to do what's right and gets torn trying to please himself. A representation of distractions that hit us in our quest for what's right. He's a regular Joe who knows they can make a difference if given a chance with an obstinate government but instead gets swallowed in the lies and conspiracies.

Phew.

This is a lot.

Sorry.

But that goes to show how good it was. I could write separate blog posts on each character based on how they channel the real world and I still won't run out of words.

And even when the comet was so close to the earth, the new strategy was to make people not look up.

It sounds strange.

How would people not look up?

So in opposition to Look Up! The government brought Don't Look Up!

And people listened. People adamantly refused to look up.

Love found a way to thrive in the movie despite the chaos. 

You see that ending that had the whole family seated and talking about likes and jokes even when the entire world was crumbling around them, that scene right there was my favourite and saddest to watch. I could feel Leo's anxiety, and worry as he looked over his friend, Teddy, his wife and sons, his fellow scientist, Debiasky and her new love.

His face. His emotions. It was everything.

Was the comedy too much? Maybe. Just a bit over. It was dark humour and might have almost clouded the message in the movie.

Case in point: The last man on Earth survived and was making a video telling people to like it. 

Which people exactly?

Favourite scenes

1. The family dinner at the end

2. Madam President dying

3. Jonah Hill surviving.

4. Prayer for stuff by Jonah Hill

5. Madam president realising she forgot her son on Earth.

6. Chris Evans cameo

I don't want to make this too long. The movie is absolutely worth the watch. The humour was just used to serve it to us gently and avoid many people from having massive anxiety throughout the movie.

I was scared. My nerves weren't steady and I kept shouting just look up. 

Sometimes we keep our head buried in lies that we feel there's no other way out, meanwhile, there is. 

All we need to do is look up. That's all. Just Look Up! 

Have you seen the movie? If you have, what are your thoughts?

Rating: 8/10

Images: Google