Don’t Look Up isn’t a particularly good comedy and it isn’t a particularly well-focused social satire, but it is a decent disaster movie. Unfortunately, it wants to be all three of these things but a broken script gets in the way.

The film posits a comet heading towards Earth and borrows heavily from similar films with their own Extinction Level Events. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who discover the incoming rock and have a hard time convincing the president (Meryl Streep) to take it seriously. She doesn’t… not until her latest political scandal makes the end of the world a useful way to wag the dog.

As a straight comedy, this movie struggles. It has a couple of decent jokes, sure… but it also has two or three running gags that it thinks are hilarious. If you find them funny then, hey, maybe this movie will be the bee’s knees. But I didn’t. That said, Ariana Grande has a pretty funny song that she performs. I wonder if anyone told her it was satire.

As far as the political and social satire goes, it’s hit or miss. Some of the social satire concerning the media is pretty good. But the political satire is just confused. Clearly it wants the comet to be a metaphor for climate change (or pick your scientific debate that’s an ideological hot potato). But the movie does such a poor job of saying anything smart about the political divide. It’s very loud and on the nose but also poorly related and doesn’t even make sense given the structure of the story.

On the other hand, as a disaster movie, I think it largely works. The first hour is quite good as the scientists learn the truth and try to warn people. Hell, even some of the social satire works as they are put on a brain-dead talk show with hosts who can’t possibly understand what they’re saying. And, as the disaster looms nearer and nearer, I liked the visual effects and the destruction porn… some if it’s even quite beautiful from a film-making perspective.

So… the movie does creep across the finish line with a decent review. The problems I had with it might not be problems for everyone. Some people might like the comedy or think the political satire works. As a pure disaster flick, there’s some good work done here. Maybe just, you know, work on that script next time.

Score: 75