138 min | R | December 10, 2021 | Netflix
A comet is coming to wipe out the planet, and two scientists have the data to prove it. They beg the president, the media, and the internet to pay attention. Turns out the end of the world makes for bad ratings.
A comet the size of Mount Everest is heading for Earth. Two astronomers discover it and calculate that it will end all life in six months. They take the news to the White House, the press, and the public, and nobody wants to hear it. Adam McKay builds his disaster movie as a one-to-one allegory for climate denial, and the comet is the metaphor he never lets you forget. The film is about a civilization that would rather scroll past extinction than schedule a meeting about it.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dr. Randall Mindy as a nervous academic who discovers he likes the spotlight more than the truth. His slow corruption into a cable-news heartthrob is the most controlled work in the film. Jennifer Lawrence plays Kate Dibiasky as the one person who refuses to perform calm, and the film punishes her for it. Meryl Streep plays President Orlean as a poll-driven narcissist who treats the apocalypse as a midterm liability. Mark Rylance plays tech billionaire Peter Isherwell with a soft, dead-eyed creepiness that lands every time he speaks. Cate Blanchett and Jonah Hill commit fully, but the script gives them targets, not characters.
McKay directs from his own screenplay, with the story credited to McKay and David Sirota, and his signature editing rhythm runs through every scene. He cuts away constantly to stock footage of insects, oceans, and crowds, hammering the point that humanity is just another species about to vanish. The technique worked as punctuation in his earlier films. Here it becomes a tic that interrupts the actors mid-thought and flattens the satire into a slideshow. Nicholas Britell’s score swells with genuine dread, and the final act earns a quiet that the rest of the film never allows itself.
The frustration is that the anger underneath all this is real and the cast is good enough to carry a sharper film. McKay knows exactly what he hates and he is right to hate it. He just does not trust the audience to arrive at the point on its own. So he writes the thesis on the wall, circles it, and reads it aloud, and a movie about people who refuse to listen ends up shouting.