By Steve Crum
It is worth your while to look up (via Netflix) the satirically funny science fiction epic, Don’t Look Up. While you’re there, watch it closely for all the nuances and parallels to current events over the past five years—during the Trump presidency years particularly. You can’t miss them, since writer/director Adam McKay blatantly lays them out. That is the film’s strength AND weakness—explored later in this piece.
Don’t Look Up is a big production, not only in its 138-minute running time, but by its diamond studded cast of Oscar winners and nominees. Consider these Tiffany types: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep. It is also big in terms of the scope (the end of the world) and visual depictions thereof. (Not to give away too much, but the outer worldly sets and digitals are particularly spotlighted late in the movie.)
Plot-wise, the time is the present. Michigan State astronomers Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence) discover the potential end of earth via a large comet which will obliterate our planet in six
months. After informing NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office honcho, Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), the three trek to 
The White House to present the doomsday findings to President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her son, Chief of Staff Jason Orlean (Jonah Hill).
After the Prez and her son reject the impending doom, Mindy and Dibiasky decide to alert the public through the media. Why not guest on a popular morning talk show hosted by Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry) and Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett)! Unfortunately, the talk show hosts spin the news as happy talk entertainment. When a high ranking official finally approves a plan to launch a missile to collide with the comet, offsetting its earth trajectory, billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) successfully cancels the plan. He has discovered a money making scheme to allow the comet to actually collide with earth.
Enough of the plot details. Just realize that more government execs, business bigwigs, and military brass enter into the wild scenario. 
“Don’t Look Up” becomes a logo printed on baseball caps worn by President Orlean and her anti-destroy the comet followers. She and her compatriots have turned disaster into a fake news fantasy. A rallying cry is heard throughout the land—at least from the loud minority.
Although no real names are mentioned in this fantasy sci-fi tale, it is easy to translate the symbolism. President Janie Orlean is a more than a mere shade of Donald Trump; Hill’s Chief of Staff Jason Orlean could be a variety of lackeys, but comes across as Don Jr.; and on and on. The caps really tell the story.
Acting by all is stellar, particularly the zaniness of Jonah Hill and Mark Rylance. They mesh perfectly with the film’s absurdism.
The big problem of Don’t Look Up is that which is being satirized is linked to a nightmarish satire itself. In other words, absorbing DLU becomes a bothersome dèjá vu unto itself. In most ways, it is too painfully true to be funny. It plays its wicked laughs to the proverbial choir of America’s political liberal and middle-of-the-roaders. That kick in the butt of recent history will surely not be appreciated by conservatives and far rightists. DLU reinterprets their red hat-ism.
Don’t Look Up is no Dr. Strangelove in achieving lasting political satire brilliance, but it does mirror the times in which it was produced. We are talking some sad, pathetic and desperate years of fear and loathing in the good ol’ USA….that still exist with this writing.
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Incidentally, be sure to watch the end credits. More footage exists!
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GRADE on an A-F Scale: B