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Don’t Look Up: As Funny as the Fyre Festival
Or as fresh and wholesome as gas station sushi or a Seven-11 hot roller
Don’t Look Up is a dark satire about the end of the world, and its creators clearly intend for it to get people thinking about climate change the same way Dr. Strangelove got people thinking about the threat of nuclear destruction during the Cold War. If you haven’t seen Dr. Strangelove, it’s a 1964 film directed by Stanley Kubrick. It stars award-winning, top box office actors of its day, including George C. Scott as Gen. Buck Turgidson and Peter Sellers as three different parts, including U.S. President Merkin Muffley and Dr. Strangelove himself, a former German Nazi scientist brought to the U.S. after WW2.
Don’t Look Up has some funny moments. I’m sure most people who watch it will be entertained: there are some big laughs along with uncomfortable cringey moments. The film broadly satirizes U.S. politics and culture, but some scenes are too realistic or too condescending to be very funny. It seems like when satire is too on-the-nose, it’s hard to laugh very much at it. The weakest parts of the film are the ones that portray “ordinary people” (with a couple of exceptions) or that veer into obvious, boring nonsense.
