by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I keep ranting about this because, much like Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, I was in the sweetspot for its intended audience. But, as with Booksmart, I bounced just about at the inciting incident. I fucking hate Booksmart for reasons similar to why I feel Don’t Look Up was a real missed opportunity.
While Booksmart was fucking preachy and caused me to feel attacked simply for being a “CIS white male,” Don’t Look Up was so hysterical and frantic in its desire to bang its message over my head that I just could not continue to watch it. This is not to say I won’t try to watch it again. Now that I know what I’m getting into, I may very well give it another go.
But let’s talk about why, despite such a great start, I found myself giving up on Don’t Look Up.
First, the movie seemed like liberal-progressive wish fulfillment. But, at the same time, it tried to hide this by couching everything in extreme bothsiderism. The POTUS in the movie seemed to be the some freakish Frankenstein’s Monster of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This was done in to such a extreme manner as to cause me to first roll my eyes then later grow so frustrated that I gave up watching.
There was just too much going on with Don’t Look Up. It seemed a mish-mash of competing storytelling agendas. Was it supposed to be a political and climate change Mars Attacks or a modern day Network? Was it meant to scare the shit out of us about how we’re not doing anything about global climate change or was it just supposed to be an long SNL skit with better production values.
Here’s how I would have fixed it. I would given the movie a far more serious tone, something on a par with Arrival. I would shock the audience by how blase everyone was behaving about the end of the world until someone flipped out about it Howard Beale style.
Or, put another way, there was a Network-style drama to be had in Don’t Look Up. Not that there wouldn’t be humor in such a different interpretation of the concept, it’s just I would have preferred a mixture of Arrival, a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and, maybe Wes Anderson movie.
Something about how over-the-top and forced Don’t Look up in its humor I found very grating to the nerves. There was also just way too much screaming. I mean, cool it, folks.
Anyway. I’m going to try again to watch this movie. Maybe I can stand it more on a second go.
