Don’t Look Up – Nominated for four total Oscars, including Best Picture

• Rotten Tomatoes – 56% fresh (critics) and 78% fresh (audience)
• IMDB – 7.2/10
• Metacritic – 49 (critics)  and 6.5 (audience)

Spider-Man: No Way Home- Nominated for one Oscar (Visual Effects)

• IMDB – 8.7/10
• Rotten Tomatoes – 93% fresh (critics) and 98% fresh (audience)
• Metacritic – 71 (critics) and 8.9 (audience)

You can look at these numbers in a couple of ways, but there are some significant differences between the two movies that shouldn’t be overlooked. Nothing suggests that a film that has gained almost all of its viewership through word of mouth through Netflix is anywhere close to a well-made movie that continues to run successfully at the theaters some nine weeks after it debuted.

While I understand that the Academy likes it if all its little starlings (McCay, DiCaprio, Blanchett, Lawrence, Streep, Rylance, Chalamet, Perry, Hill) are in the room and can recognize them all at once, we’ve gotten to the point where the Oscars are becoming as ridiculous as the Grammy’s if they haven’t reached that point already.

I am in the minority when I say I didn’t love Spider-Man: No Way Home. Combining all three Spider-Man characters in the same movie was intriguing, compelling, and pretty neat. But the plot was terrible, the acting was ridiculous, and the character was stale. Even with the uniqueness of this film, it continued to follow the predictable Marvel cookie-cutter formula. Nothing terrible will happen to the good guys that they can’t overcome. It can be great for some audiences. It’s grown old with me. However, for the sake of argument, if you substitute The Last Duel (a movie that I did like and do have in my Top 10 of 2021) for Spider-Man: No Way Home, the same arguments could be made in terms of revenue (though with a $100 million budget and just $31 million worldwide gross, The Last Duel was a pretty massive bomb. This never would have happened five years ago, but I digress). The Last Duel performed better than Don’t Look Up in the aggregator movie sites identified above.

All this to say that I wonder if I would have reviewed Don’t Look Up had it not received an Oscar for Best Picture. While I still likely would have (because it’s a DiCaprio movie), it would have been with great reluctance. The film is okay…But so are Mars Attacks. This is a better all-around movie, but Mars Attacks does this more effectively than Don’t Look Up. It entertained and didn’t try to be anything more than it was. McCay is known for some pretty hysterical comedies such as Step Brothers and The Other Guys, just as he is for his more imaginative, expose-type films such as The Big Short and Vice. It seemed like he wasn’t entirely sure what he was going for with Don’t Look Up. Neither? Both? Something more? It took a lot of work to tell what this movie was and what it was trying to accomplish. In the end, it needed more substance to be remembered or revisited for two hours of entertainment.

However, I’m also the first to say that, while far great, I was pleasantly surprised by Don’t Look Up.  Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island) is my favorite actor. He’s also the star of my all-time favorite movie, The Revenant. Since his career began in the early 1990s, I’ve noted that he’s never really been in a comedy before. Of course, you could argue for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. However, like most Tarantino movies, that film is difficult to classify. Don’t Look Up isn’t. It fits the comedy genre. It’s intelligent, dark humor more so than laugh-out-loud funny humor, but this is a comedy more than anything else.

Adam McCay’s (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Anchorman) movie is simple. Zainy astronomy professor Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) and Ph.D. candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook) have discovered evidence that a giant comet is heading towards Earth and will wipe out the planet when it arrives in just over six months. Together, they make it their mission to inform everyone of this planet killer in hopes that the government or US military will do something to derail this impact somehow. The problem is that no one will listen to them, calling it a hoax or some outlandish conspiracy theory. Even too consumed by anything but her polling numbers, President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep – Doubt, The Iron Lady) seems disinterested in what Randall, Kate, and high-ranking scientist Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan – The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Mudbound) have to say unless it is something she can spin to make her situation looking more favorable. Her semi-psychotic son Jason (Jonah Hill – The Wolf of Wall Street, Moneyball) is also her Chief of Staff. He shines in his scenes as someone who wants to be adhered to and respected when, in actuality, he is his mother’s puppet.

Other movie highlights include television hosts Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) and Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry – Vice, Gone Girl). Randall and Kate can secure interviews on their popular news show, ready to state their case, only to be bumped by a story of a breakup between a pop star (Ariana Grande) and another well-known musical act with whom she was in a relationship with (think of Kardashian/Kanye West reconciliation taking precedence over, say, a potential alien invasion. That kind of stuff). Blanchett and Perry are fantastic in these roles. Again, think Regis and Kelly or your favorite entertainment news show duo.

While entertaining, the story meanders more than it should. I liked the first half a lot. By the time we got to the third act, I was more than ready for the movie to end. It started to drag. Some of the characters got pretty irritating as well, most notably Blanchette’s Brie, Streep’s Janie, and Marky Rylance’s (Bridge of Spies, The Trial of the Chicago 7) Peter Isherwell, a CEO of a bigtime tech company, looking to capitalize on the precious natural resources that the comet has on it. By the end, the annoyance became too much.

While DiCaprio wouldn’t have been my first choice for this movie, he proved he could effectively carry a non-drama. He was the highlight and the most consistent part of the film. DiCaprio digs into each of his roles, and I wonder why I might have initially expected this one to be any different. Subconsciously, perhaps I didn’t want him to be as good as I prefer him in heavier dramas. Equally compelling was the always-reliable Lawrence. Comedy is a bit of a different direction for her, too, though this role reminded me much of her character in Joy.

Best Picture nominee? Hardly. Worth the watch? If you’ve got nothing better to do, you could do worse. I’m glad I saw it. I liked the first half much more than the second.

Plot 7/10
Character Development 7/10
Character Chemistry 7/10 (DiCaprio and Lawrence played off each other nicely. Blanchett was misused. Streep felt out of place)
Acting 9/10 (DiCaprio and Lawrence were both great, though I wish each had devoted the time spent creating this movie to other projects)
Screenplay 7/10
Directing 6/10
Cinematography 7/10
Sound 7/10 (I’ve been reading everywhere about how great the sound was…total exaggeration)
Hook and Reel 7/10 (the first half was great, the second half was not)
Universal Relevance 8/10
72%