‘Don’t Look Up’ Review: Adam McKay’s Depressing Netflix Comedy Slogs Toward the Apocalypse

Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and a galaxy full of stars are dulled by a witless satire about the end of the world. In the beginning, there was light. And then, there were movies. And then, not long after that, there were people who watched those movies and snarked, “Well, that’s two hours I’ll never get back” (though it wouldn’t be surprising if that barb originated before the advent of multiple-reel cinema, maybe with some monocled jackass who wasted an entire minute of his life at a screening of William Heise’s 1896 short “The Kiss” only to discover that there wasn’t any tongue). As Charlie Kaufman is fond of pointing out, however, every two hours is two hours that you’ll never get back. It doesn’t matter if a movie is good or bad or anything in between: At the end of the day, we cannot hoard our time.

And yet, for all of the truth contained in that wisdom, certain films make it almost impossible to shake the feeling that cinema — the most palpably fourth-dimensional of all popular art forms — possesses an unrivaled ability to make us appreciate how we can waste it. Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” is nothing if not one of those films.

In the beginning, there was light. And then, there were movies. And then, not long after that, there were people who watched those movies and snarked, “Well, that’s two hours I’ll never get back” (though it wouldn’t be surprising if that barb originated before the advent of multiple-reel cinema, maybe with some monocled jackass who wasted an entire minute of his life at a screening of William Heise’s 1896 short “The Kiss” only to discover that there wasn’t any tongue). As Charlie Kaufman is fond of pointing out, however, every two hours is two hours that you’ll never get back. It doesn’t matter if a movie is good or bad or anything in between: At the end of the day, we cannot hoard our time.

And yet, for all of the truth contained in that wisdom, certain films make it almost impossible to shake the feeling that cinema — the most palpably fourth-dimensional of all popular art forms — possesses an unrivaled ability to make us appreciate how we can waste it. Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” is nothing if not one of those films.

In the beginning, there was light. And then, there were movies. And then, not long after that, there were people who watched those movies and snarked, “Well, that’s two hours I’ll never get back” (though it wouldn’t be surprising if that barb originated before the advent of multiple-reel cinema, maybe with some monocled jackass who wasted an entire minute of his life at a screening of William Heise’s 1896 short “The Kiss” only to discover that there wasn’t any tongue). As Charlie Kaufman is fond of pointing out, however, every two hours is two hours that you’ll never get back. It doesn’t matter if a movie is good or bad or anything in between: At the end of the day, we cannot hoard our time.

And yet, for all of the truth contained in that wisdom, certain films make it almost impossible to shake the feeling that cinema — the most palpably fourth-dimensional of all popular art forms — possesses an unrivaled ability to make us appreciate how we can waste it. Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” is nothing if not one of those films.