“I’m so bored. Just tell us what it is.”

A comet large enough to shame the dinosaurs is approaching the Earth. There is a 99.7% chance that it will directly impact the planet’s surface in 6 months. You know this because you’re the one that spotted it and ran the numbers and re-ran them and hated it and then re-ran them again. The question is… what do you do now? And, more importantly, what will anyone with the power to alter the entire fate of humanity do now?

If that sounds like a good premise for a film, Don’t Look Up may just be for you. The caveat to that is, if you don’t like getting hit over the head with a hammer, Don’t Look Up may not be for you.

The 2021 December release, Don’t Look Up has polarized audiences and critics alike with its blunt satire, ensemble cast, and bleak outlook at a situation that isn’t impossible and is definitely reflective of real world happenings. The problem? It isn’t very clever, and it’s far too long. At nearly two and a half hours in runtime, Look somehow doesn’t leave you with much to consider in the end.

If you take the basic plot of the film [imminent doomsday event being put in the hands of the elite to solve] and take a wild guess at how that turns out, you’ve already solved the film’s entire riddle. This isn’t to say that Look lacks all poignancy or is droll. It's just that it just gives you a gag 15-minutes into the film and then never evolves past it. Hit me with a hammer once, I’ll laugh. Hit me with the same hammer for two more hours, and you’ve made a really basic and forgettable satire on the state of the world that leaves me with nothing greater to consider or a higher sense of self than I started with.

Now, I don’t want to make Don’t Look Up out to be entirely boring, bad, or stupid. It is none of those things. It just isn’t something anybody is going to remember 30-minutes after the credits roll.

With some really interesting and well done camera-work/ visual editing to differentiate between the film’s “natural”, “newscast”, and “outside world” settings, Look manages to create three subtle but distinct styles of filmmaking within the same piece. The performances are great across the board with the most forgettable being from Jennifer Lawrence, but that isn’t her fault. Her character was just written as a catalyst… So that’s what she played. The bits are spot on and mostly funny, there are just too many of them.

Throughout the film we hit the beats of the previous administration’s blunders and our general attitude towards scientific endeavors absolutely head on with 100% accuracy. The issue is just that we don’t need to keep hitting those beats for the entire runtime of the film. At some point a beat needs a melody, and this film doesn’t find it until the last 6 or so minutes.

If you have to go to the bathroom during its bloated runtime or forget your phone in the other room, don’t bother pausing this one because you’re sure not to miss much. Don’t Look Up is a great casual watch with friends but is simply not profound or insightful enough to be worth watching again. I wish it left me with a better message or more to chew on. Instead, let's all just live life to the fullest, trust science, and never forget,

“We are all 100%, for sure, going to F***ING DIE”