Having long complained that too few films are engaging with the climate crisis, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, I feel “churlish” for not loving Don’t Look Up, a comedy that does just that. The story follows two astronomers, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, who discover that a Mount Everest-sized comet is zooming towards the planet, and is poised to wipe out human life in six months. The scientists present their findings to the White House, but learn that the “political and media classes can’t or won’t grasp what they’re saying”. There are hints here of Dr. Strangelove and Wag the Dog, but the film is so stuffed with self-aware slapstick that it ends up feeling like a 145-minute Saturday Night Live sketch. Still, if it “helps to do something about climate change, such critical objections are unimportant”.
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