Don’t look up – movie review

Been quite busy in binge watching the idiot box the whole of last week 😊 Stumbled upon this movie which started as a satire and turned out to be down right scary. The problem with being sarcastic is beyond a point the line between bitter truth and sarcasm vanish, leaving behind stark reality. Don’t look up falls in that category where the makers ran out of witty spoofs for the real life situations and ends up projecting the actuals, which has resulted in messing up the ending. The story starts with a bunch of scientists huddled in front of their systems, observing the sky, where one bright lady, spots a comet. Despite repeat checks of the path and projections, the scary scenario hits them hard that the comet is a planet killer, headed for earth in 6 month time. They rush with their data to White house, obviously the savior of free world and every doomsday scenario, where they are made to wait for hours. The military guy even makes them pay for what was supposedly free food on the house. After several deliberations, when they finally do get a chance with the sitting lady president, their fears are dismissed as non-critical. The issues that are being projected as top priority items, shock the scientists and the response from general public, which gets swayed over couple of tweets and Instagram posts, worries them further. They decide to go rouge and tries to warn the world by appearing on a talk show, only to get ridiculed. While the lady scientist becomes the scrouge of the net, her boss becomes a celebrity, courtesy the lady host of the show. Another dig at how public opinion is ridiculously biased and can be herded. As much as they try to bring out the truth, each in their own way, it all gets shushed away amidst all those vanity issues of pop stars, political climate, elections and lot other more ridiculous gossip news. The lady scientist after whom the comet gets named, struggles really hard and eventually gives up. While her boss gets all the attention and even a promotion onto the scientific board of the president. Finally he breaks down on the same show that made him a public icon, crying out loud that the comet can even be seen with naked eye and still there are people who disbelieve. Eventually, the world wakes up and decides to launch “Armageddon” movie like missions to break the comet using nukes. In comes a businessman, a spoof on Musk/Bezos/Jobs (?), who tells the president that there are trillions of dollars of minerals on the comet and rather than destroying it, the same can be drilled. The president cancels the mission and they redraw another one involving drones for drilling the comet. Everything fails and earth gets destroyed. The president and her cronies hatches an escape plan to an earth like planet on a secret mission. Irony being, she forgets her own son to be included on that flight. They all land up on the planet, only to be devoured by the dinosaur like animals inhabiting that space. 

The cast and crew of this movie are top notch with Dicaprio playing the boss, Jennifer Lawrence playing the lady scientist, Meryl Streep playing president and a whole lot of famous actors. A fantastic story line which actually tells the real tale of how this scenario would be handled in real time, literally sending shivers of realism. Wish it could’ve been better written from the second half onwards towards a tighter ending. A decent movie nevertheless.