Adam McKay is one of my favorite American filmmakers. His movie "The Big Short" is a constant watch for me. Going into this movie, I didn't really care about any outside detail. I didn't even watch the trailer, so my opinion wasn't really influenced by critics or haters of the movie. Leaving it, I felt a bit "meh", I laughed at the movie but didn't think much of it, at least during my first watch.
The movie is supposed to be a satire that opens a list of issues I didn't care to address or look closely at. Like, what is the limitation of satire? Can you pick and choose what to satire or exaggerate? Is it fair to only satire certain aspects but not others?
Those were the questions in my head going out of the movie. Questions that the more I thought about, the more it made me dislike the movie of someone I really like. So, I decided to leave them behind. Plus, the movie was still funny, so it is fine. In fact, as a movie, it was a pretty damn great comedy if you don't think about those questions like I have.
The Divide
People on the right hated it for certain aspects and portrayals, people on the right hated it for certain aspects and portrayals. Basically, people who didn't like being satirized had a problem with it. Which is normal, nobody likes being made fun of. The funny side of it is that both sides think that he was only satarizing them but not the other side. This opens up a great question that I think encapsulates everything "wrong" about Don't Look Up.
How Do You Review A Movie You Politically/Socially Disagree With?
I mentioned The Big Short previously. While I do acknowledge to have liked the movie, there are certain aspects I felt the movie didn't address like George Bush foreseeing that the loans that led to the collapse of the US economy were instigated by the government, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae loan companies.
Bush warned about it. Barney Frank and Christopher John Dodd ensured those loans continued. In the end, no one was punished and the latter two wrote the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It is a great big detail to be missing.
Now, you may disagree with how I see it. And that's exactly my point.
We're Not Talking About The Movie Anymore
My criticism of The Big Short is something that is not in it. It may be correct or wrong, but it is meaningless since it is not in it anyway.
In satire, that problem is worse. It was an imaginary situation that everyone involved saw that they wouldn't react like that. They saw the other side reacting like that, but not themselves.
Throughout the movie, Jonah Hill and Meryl Streep turn up how they view the Trumps. The popstar gets more promotional driven, the morning people get more plastic. Inefectuality on one side, lack of acknowledgment on the other.
Within the context of the movie, it is totally fine. Once you relate it to actual people, you start having a problem with it. The movie has the climate change undertone to it which spiraled critics and hatred of the movie into an area outside the movie itself.
If you agree with how the movie portrays these people, you're in for a nice "The portrayal was on point" nice comment. But...
What If You Don't?
There's no form in which you can talk about all of these things within a movies community. You have to make it social or political. Or, the alternative is having a 4000 words post, with only 1/10 of it about the movie itself.
In Conclusion
This to me is the dichotomy of Don't Look Up or any movie with social or political views. You either agree with them, in that case, the movie is great, or you don't, in that case, the movie is horrible.
Don't Look Up isn't the only movie with such dichotomy. I remember how Unplanned was viewed as pro-abortion people hated it while anti-abortion people loved it. Those movies don't seem to be about just the characters in the movie or the quality in the cinematography, but rather, whether you and the filmmaker voted for the same person in the last election.
