Don't look up reviews are pretty negative. We really enjoyed it.

[BoomaofBandM]

Am I getting paranoid? Has big conservative money gotten to reviewers?

To be fair, I am no movie expert. My husband, a movie lover, not only has to explain pop references and plot lines to me, but in our older age of hearing loss he has to tell me literally what actors have said. It works for us. I approach many films as I do baseball, occasionally looking up from my reading to ask what is going on. Its a flaw of mine, but I keep trying.

So when I saw Don't Look Up, I was so happy that we could enjoy the whole movie together. A rare treat in our 30 years of marriage. I mean, my husband was used to nudging me awake when I started to snore in theaters pre pandemic. And this was a movie that spoke to me as only the movies Arsenic and Old Lace and Harvey have been able to. A not subtle take on the crazy that has occurred. A take that had to go over the top of crazy to properly put what we are up against in perspective.

While it is ok to not like a movie, and a review is one persons opinion, the fact there are so many negative reviews scares me. Am I that out of touch to where "my fellow americans" are? One reviewer was perturbed at the movies take on climate change. Ummm. Or has big money and evangelicals added certain reviewers to the glazed eyed white washed mericunts.

I am glad I there are do many people on DU who also enjoyed the movie. And if there is anyone who was involved in the making of this movie reading this, I thank you for a few hours of laughs. I needed it.

[badhair77]

1. Thanks for the review. I will try to check it out.

[targetpractice]

2. It's polarizing...

Progressives will like it, while conservatives will hate it. Not much middle ground, and the average of the reviews tend to be in the middle.

I thought it was a great movie!

[TexasBushwhacker]

19. There are RWNJs who spend their days

Writing positive reviews for every right leaning piece or media and frothing-at-the-mouth negative reviews for any they view as leftist. Personally, I liked it - A LOT.

[sheshe2]

3. I watched it last night.

I liked it. 🙂

[JustAnotherGen]

4. NY Times

Has a climate denier on staff - so I take that one with a grain of salt. Me? I loved it. So did my husband.

For ONCE - in a disaster movie - Superman didn't fly around the earth turning back time.

[The Roux Comes First]

5. It Fell Pretty Flat With Us, But I Too Was Surprised

By the level of negativity and near-invective when I checked reviews after watching. I went into it wholly unprepared and with no expectations, and that probably sets me apart from most of those paid by the review, who seemed at least resentful that their over-the-top expectations for intricate Matrix-like plot twists and innuendoes were not fulfilled.

As for me, I came to realize that four years of watching the yam gleefully metastasize in plain sight made much of the movie seem like a nightmare suddenly inhabited by friends and relatives and difficult to watch too closely. There were good guffaws along the way, though. And I hope I can find the closing Eden scene and flip the script by reinvesting it with the original yam cast.

As an aside, huge kudos to you for your self-awareness as to your movie- and sports-watching difficulties and to both you and your husband for your amiable resulting life adjustments. The definition of a partnership!

[mopinko]

6. it's the hit dog that hollers.

a lack of self reflection is prolly the core of being a "conservative" so, yeah, like garlic to dracula.

[Binkie The Clown]

7. When critics really love a movie, I agree with them, but when they don't like it...

...I almost always disagree with them.

[IrishAfricanAmerican]

8. 7.3 on IMDB.com is excellent.

Last edited Tue Dec 28, 2021, 03:10 AM - Edit history (1)

Not sure were you're seeing negative reviews but IMDB is fairly accurate from what I've seen and the film is 7.3 out of 10 there. I usually consider any show getting above 7 to be well worth watching.

[Ocelot II]

9. Some reviewers thought it was too heavy-handed.

It was heavy-handed. But it's the kind of satire that whacks you upside the head because it has to. The message was basically that as a society we are too superficial, self-absorbed and selfish to recognize, let alone do something about, any crisis that confronts us. It wasn't really about specific disaster like climate change or covid, but how we confront them, or not. It stepped on a lot of toes, not just Trumpist disaster-deniers; it came down very hard on bubble-headed media and pop culture types who are interested only in entertainment and social media attention. If you're looking for subtlety you won't find it in this movie, which is both funny and dark. Watch all the way to the very end of the credits, after the logo and the screen goes black. There's a bleakly hilarious little final scene.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

36. It's Gulliver's Travels heavy-handed.

Hard to believe he wrote it before the pandemic seeing how on-point he was.

[PortTack]

10. The film was produced by david sirota....yes that one! Not watching ...period!

[Ocelot II]

11. It was written and directed by Adam McKay. Any involvement Sirota might have had must be minimal,

because he's not even mentioned in Wikipedia's article describing the production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Look_Up_(2021_film) I'm not a Sirota fan either but whatever work he did on this film, if any, seems to be so inconsequential that it wasn't mentioned. So don't cheat yourself out of a good movie just because you hate some guy who might or might not have had something minor to do with its production.

[TexasBushwhacker]

20. Sirota shares a "story by" credit with McKay

As well as a "co-producer" credit.

[Ocelot II]

21. That's not much; certainly not enough to warrant shunning the movie.

[TexasBushwhacker]

22. Definitely shouldn't be shunned

Besides, sharing the story credit with McCay and getting a co-producer credit may just be bones they threw Sirota.

Doc Severenson got a writing credit on Mac David's song "Stop and Smell the Roses" because Doc suggested the TITLE. Credits in Hollywood are an equally weird game. When they were making The Buddy Holly Story with Gary Busey, they ran out of money. An acquaintance of mine, a trust fund baby and venture capitalist, provided just enough money for them to finish, but he finagled a "CoExecutive Producer" credit out of it. It took him forever to get his investment back though, because Hollywood has an accounting method called "rolling break even".

Anyway, I think McCay did a masterful job. The supporting roles were meaty enough that he got some heavy hitters interested even though the film was lower than average by Hollywood standards ($75 M). He probably got his people to call Meryl Streep's people and said "Do you want to play a conservative POTUS for 2 weeks?". She read the script and said HELL YES! Out of 138 minutes of the film, she was only on the screen for 35 minutes. Leo and Jennifer were on for 86 and 77 minutes respectively.

[paleotn]

23. Is that a line from Don't Look Up?

Seriously? Fits the parody of our bizarre culture perfectly.

My first thought on watching it was....maybe we deserve to become extinct and the dinosaurs are the ones who got screwed.

[kimbutgar]

12. Saw it Christmas night

And we all really enjoyed it. It was a good representation of how America has become dumbed down. And we ignored that our planet is in trouble not from a comet but the earth warming so quickly.

[JohnSJ]

13. I think that may be because people may think this is a sci-fi movie, and don't realize it is a

satire with comic dialogue

[Ohio Joe]

14. I liked it... My favorite scene...

Was the almost blink and you miss it scene with DiCaprio arguing with people on the internet

[Polly Hennessey]

15. I saw it and loved it.

DiCaprio’s line, “We really did have everything, didn’t we” will stay with me a long time. Also, Mark Rylance’s portrayal of the billionaire tech jerk was masterful.

[KT2000]

16. Smart movie

They hit so many nails with it. For humor, the General who sold them free snacks and Diabilsky's obsession with it was hilarious. I will watch it again because I am going to "suggest" friends see it too.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. I agree that the satire was a bit heavy handed.

Ben H. Winters has written a trilogy about a comet that is also going to wipe out most life on Earth once it hits. It's The Last Policeman trilogy. The comet will hit in about 6 months at the beginning of the first book. The last policeman is a man who sees no point in not doing his job down to the last minute, even though many, many people are just abandoning their jobs, doing whatever the hell they want in the short time remaining. It's really, really good and I highly recommend it.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

37. I read the first book because it was mentioned on Lost.

Lost had me reading and rereading a lot of stuff. Great book.

[doc03]

18. I watched it I thought it was ok nothing

great about it.

[paleotn]

24. Very well done....

I can't think of one single fucked up thing about our culture they didn't touch on.

[roody]

25. I thought it was a good movie, and I rarely watch a movie.

I did not find anything funny about it.

[snowybirdie]

26. Spoiler Alert -The old folks

here loved it! Want my grandchildren to definitely see it. Hard to believe they actually made a funny doomsday movie. A Dr Strangelove for a new generation. Recommended.

[Achilleaze]

27. Good flick. Everyone should see it.

Human beings do better when they face and deal with reality.

[Collimator]

29. A specific point came to me watching the mid-credits scene.

Spoiler Alert!

On some other DU thread discussing this movie, comments were made about the need for 5000 or so survivors in order to make a sustainable re-population effort. But, note the median age of all the people wandering out of the pods.

The fact that they all seemed well above reproductive age is an indictment by the story tellers of all the powerful older--hell, let's just call them aged--politicos who are passing legislation that either favors their immediate interests and/or ignores the needs of the people who will be living in a future shaped by the policies they establish.

In the movie, time, money and resources were lavished on a project to ensure the survival of a bunch of people who might not have lived more than a decade and a half longer under normal circumstances. No real effort was made to save a planet filled with young people looking to experience all the normal joys and sorrows that their elders knew in their time. That is exactly what Greta and her age-mates are trying to tell us.

Another minor thought that came to me was after Merle Streep's character calmly walked up to a seemingly harmless creature with an attitude of mild curiosity. What happened was sort of like the opposite of what happened when European explorers encountered the dodo. Sometimes, a little fear and suspicion is a good thing.

[chia]

30. "The fact that they all seemed well above reproductive age is an indictment by the story tellers of

all the powerful older--hell, let's just call them aged--politicos who are passing legislation that either favors their immediate interests and/or ignores the needs of the people who will be living in a future shaped by the policies they establish."

Spot on.

[TexasBushwhacker]

31. I just watched it again - SPOILER

And Meryl Streep's body double has a tramp stamp (lower back tattoo) - LOL.

[Collimator]

32. I noticed the tattoo. . .

. . . But I thought that I read, (and I could be wrong) that Streep had actually done a nude scene.

Re: My original point about privileging the older but powerful over the young who can both contribute to the gene pool and who will have to live (or die) in a future made by the old and powerful--the one character in that scene whom we know had a child managed to forget about rescuing her child.

I think that was a deliberate story-telling choice. It was a way to hammer home the point that the only protective instincts at work in the minds of our current older politicos are the instincts to preserve their lives, personal comforts and bank accounts. They really don't care what sort of a world future generations will have to face.

Hell, even I tend to seek cold comfort in the knowledge that I will be dead before some of the worst shit hits the fan vis a vis the coming environmental show-down. I don't think such thoughts because I don't care. It's because my mental health is so fragile at times that the only way I can get through the day is to remind myself that I won't be here to see some of the crap to come.

Frankly, I don't know how thoughtful, aware people young people like Greta Thunberg hang on to any shred of sanity. Anybody who tells her to "lighten up and enjoy life" and "go back to school" so she can prepare for the future is an utter asshole.

[TexasBushwhacker]

33. I read that Meryl was fine with the nudity

But Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't! He begged the director to use a body double because he couldn't handle the thought of seeing someone he admired so much in the buff. So at the beginning of the scene, they blurred out her breasts, then used a body double for the bare bottom.

I also noticed that most of the "refugees" were older and white, and I agree, I think it was a deliberate choice.

Man oh man. What a film! I wish I had dragged my butt to the theater to see it.

[TexasBushwhacker]

35. I see what you did there - SPOILER

"Just desserts" - eating - NOM NOM NOM!!!