Don't Look Up Review

The best sequence comes early, when the scientists finally carry the end of the world into the Oval Office and are told to sit tight and assess until after the midterms. Adam McKay has a real subject there, and Jennifer Lawrence, playing a graduate student whose face refuses to do what television wants it to do, gives the one performance that stays honest for the full runtime.

DiCaprio's Randall Mindy is decent work as well, a nervous man who discovers that he enjoys being the reassuring one. After that the film stops finding things out. Hank Corwin's editing keeps cutting away to stock footage of insects and children in case anyone missed the point, and the point is then repeated for over two hours: the media is silly, politicians are venal, tech billionaires are worse.

Mark Rylance is the exception, playing Peter Isherwell as a soft spoken alien who has never once been contradicted, while Meryl Streep's president is a cartoon with nothing inside her. The last reel is saved by the dinner table, an ordinary scene played straight, where the anger drops away and people hold hands and argue about whether store bought apple pie beats homemade. That tone deserved to arrive an hour sooner.