Don't Look Up

Poor old "Kate Dibiansky" (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor "Mindy" (Leonardo DiCaprio) have the misfortune to discover an huge comet heading on a collision course with Earth. When they report this to "Oglethorpe" (Rob Morgan) - the man at NASA charged with coping with such existential threats, the three are now exposed to the upper echelons of the US administration that frequently elicits a smile and a grimace from the audience. The real star of the movie, Meryl Streep, is "President Orlean" (Yes, guess what her Christian name is?) who presides over her government with the aid of her hapless chief of staff son "Jason" (Jonah Hill) in what is a very thinly veiled swipe at all things Trumpian. The story pretty much follows the thread of "Meteor" (1979) only with better special effects, and the corporate machinations of the "Blofeld"-esque "Isherwell" (Sir Mark Rylance) add quite a bit of faux-menace to this rather entertaining parody of disaster movie meets political drama by way of some manipulative and fickle television journalism (epitomised by a fun contribution from Cate Blanchett). The pace of the film is a bit hit-and-miss, but keep an eye out for a nice couple of scenes from Ron Perlman as the archetypally gung-ho, militaristic, "Drask" and from Timothée Chalamet (where does he find the time?) as the hippy love interest "Yule" that both add some bulk and humour to the otherwise quite flimsy plot that enjoys quite a really fitting end. At the top end of Netflix' productions this - for a change some decent writing accompanies an on-form cast and i enjoyed it.