I didn’t know much about it, but the few bits of reviews I saw for Don’t Look Up said it was a satirical comedy. One review said it was the funniest movie of the year while also the most depressing. I turned it off at 30 minutes because I hadn’t cracked a smile.
Two things about me:
1) It is very hard to make me laugh.
2) I’m at a point in my life where I am not interested in doing anything I do not enjoy.
To point one, I don’t think I’m necessarily surly, but my experience with humor tends to lean more toward me saying “oh that was clever” as opposed to laughing out loud. The things that make me laugh out loud are usually unexpected mishaps or unexpected jokes. Surprises make me laugh. I’m shocked by some of the one liners on The Golden Girls, and it makes me laugh out loud. I am shocked by the faces babies make when they eat lemons, and it makes me laugh out loud.
Clever writing rarely makes me laugh out loud, but I can very much enjoy it. You’ll never see me hootin and hollerin at Erma Bombeck, but I’ve read at least ten of her books. I don’t go to stand-up shows, because it’s hard to make me laugh out loud, and it’s rude not to laugh at a comedy show — but I’ll watch stand-up specials on Netflix because I enjoy the jokes if they’re smart and performed well.
I cannot find the jokes in Don’t Look Up. It felt like a documentary.
To the second point, up until recently I would say I suffer from depression and anxiety, but I’ve been dealing with it quite well as of late (with the realization being that much of my mental health has been tied to financial instability and I currently have a job I like). But! Because I am always teetering close to the edge in some ways, I only want to enjoy things. I have no desire to voluntarily put myself in positions where I have to force myself to get through it. I don’t want to consume art that is a struggle for me to finish.
I cannot finish Don’t Look Up.
The experience of watching it was so strange for me because movies don’t really make me uncomfortable. I can watch just about anything even if I don’t like it that much. About 30 minutes into Don’t Look Up, I realized I had been sitting on my couch getting more and more wound up! My breaths were shorter. My stomach felt like I had just put ice cream into my lactose intolerant body. I have never physically disliked a movie so much! And that doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. It’s just not for me at all.
I don’t really like the world that much. No part of me is optimistic about the future of the planet. I don’t go around shouting it from the rooftops, because I believe in spreading love and happiness and doing what I can to help those around me enjoy themselves, but I am very much in full support of Team Asteroid. People as a collective are not that great. They’re selfish, they’re mean, they don’t take care of each other. There’s so much torture and pain running through the history of humanity. Legal, common, and popular approval of setting people on fire, ripping them into pieces, starving them, working them until they die — that’s the history of mankind.
Watching a movie that is telling me people are too stupid to save themselves doesn’t make me feel good. I can’t laugh at that, because that’s how I feel every day, and when I think about it, I feel awful. It makes me feel awful that people suck. It makes me feel awful to be reminded that there are a few people trying to save the world against an never-ending onslaught of purposefully ignorant bureaucracies.
I think Don’t Look Up is probably done well. Meryl Streep fully inhabited her character and I could feel Leonardo DiCaprio’s anxiety through the screen. Mark Rylance once again proved too many Best Of lists leave him out of the conversation for acting talents of a generation. It just stressed me out too much, so I’m going to watch something else instead. If you’re a mildly depressed, anxious, pessimist with a disdain for leadership who does not enjoy the feeling of “yep, that’s exactly how it’d happen” when you see the world play out on screen the way it does in your head, this probably isn’t the movie for you either.
(Or you can keep watching it and see if there’s a huge payoff! I’ve rarely suffered through 30 minutes of something only to get to the end and be like “wow, I’m glad I put myself through that for the amazing experience this turned out to be.”)
Leave a Reply