Don't Look Up

Parts of this film were really well observed. One that springs very easily to mind: Kate aiming for a spliff after the opening phone call; someone knows a chunk of astronomy PhD students. At the same time there are so many lazy tropes about women scientists it’s painful, from the incredibly unflattering haircut to fact she’s the one that has hysterics and gets called up on it. Really, this paragraph is a reflection of the film as a whole: there are good ideas and terrible parts shoved together into an uncomfortable mess.

There are funny jokes in here. Some are smart, some are stupid and, for me, too many are a swing and a miss.

There is some good social commentary about how the various parts of the system interact with science news. It was meant to be about climate change but with the tight limit and the change in circumstances it works far better as a satire about Covid. Part of the problem, for all us but particularly with expecting politicians to handle it well, with climate change is there’s no real urgency in political terms; politicians are old, by and large, and have a short time in power. Climate change is a problem that earns them no rewards in their lifetime so there is no urge to make it a top priority. Their electorate, at least in some countries and some parts of the electorate, has a different view, so you’re relying on the pressure to win votes, which is important, but there are always other things that win votes and bring a more immediate reward to the politician. If they’re faced with “should I do something about climate change or should I make 5,000 more jobs for my constituents in the next two years?” the second one (nearly) always wins because the politician can point and say “I made all those jobs, re-elect me.” Beating Covid, or stopping the comet, has the lifespan of a politician's career at the top so it’s a top priority. That might sound cynical, but I live in a country where our top politicians are telling us that we should prepare to move to a post-Covid world, no restrictions, no testing, no Covid dashboard and so on from the end of January. That’s two weeks away, and while London might be moving out the Omicron wave, the rest of the England still has rising cases as I write (the picture in Wales and Scotland is a bit trickier, but they also have mostly falling cases overall, but different lockdown rules).

There’s a fun little satire aimed at Facebook and Elon Musk while rather unfairly parodying Steve Jobs. Perhaps the topics are safer, or the jokes were written by someone different, but this set of jokes worked better for me.

When it bursts into its anti-Trump diatribe it’s on what should be safer ground, comedically. Maybe it will be for you. I hope at some point I can laugh at Trump but even from safely over the pond it’s still too painful for me to find this funny.

Comedy is a deeply personal thing. I don’t regret having watched this, it had just enough bits that I did find funny but I can’t help wishing it had been written by Armando Ianucci; it needed a defter touch than it got, at least for me.

It’s nice to see JLaw back on the screen. She might have competition now but she’s one of the few actors that will guarantee my bum on a seat still, as it did for this.

Bechdel Test: Pass. There are fewer scenes than you might imagine, but JLaw has passing conversations with both Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett.

Russo Test: Fail. There are WOC in the film. None of them get to the requisite five talking scenes though. There are two men that would pass.

Russo Test: Fail. This just has no one that gets even close. Cate Blanchett's character could really easily have been made bisexual, maybe I phased out and missed the woman in her list of former lovers and she was, but she wasn’t presented that way.