The critics doth protest too much about "Don't Look Up"

The comedic doomsday film slams the media like a comet hitting earth. And they don't like that.

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There’s been so much passionate and sometimes angry discussion about the star-studded Netflix film “Don’t Look Up,” directed by Adam McKay (“The Big Short” and “Vice”). The reviews from mainstream media critics have been mixed, but they’re either excoriating it completely, or praising it as exactly what we need.

Meanwhile, many critics who aren’t getting paid by media — people on social media who are talking about it — appear to love the film, seeing it as a powerful indictment and wake-up call. I don’t want to give too much away for those who haven’t seen it. But, basically, a giant comet is hurtling toward earth and an America deeply immersed in bad media that is obsessed with clicks and ratings, and is populated by many people driven by political lies and conspiracy theories, can’t deal with it. All the while, political leaders are only worried about polling and the mid-term elections.

A lot of people, including its director, have likened the film to a farcical if obvious allegory about climate change. But I think it’s about…everything. The comet isn’t just about the threat to the planet; it’s a metaphor for all that is cataclysmically sinister and which is coming toward us while most people have no awareness of it or just dismiss it.

Don’t get me wrong: “Don’t Look Up,” presenting as a comedy, a satire, a disaster film, a science fiction epic and a fill-in-the-blank, makes itself easy to skewer. It’s uneven as it morphs from one thing to another. It appears to be funny when it’s not intended to be, and it sometimes isn’t funny when it apparently intends to be (at least, to me). “Don’t Look Up” is often not just hitting you over the head — it’s pulverizing you with its message.

And with purposefully buffoonish characters played by a cast that includes Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande and so many more, there’s a lot for these heavy-hitter performers to live up to in trying to strike the right pose in a shape-shifting film. When they don’t at any given moment, it’s easy to swat them.

But these are all minor and very convenient things for critics to use in order to lambaste a film that largely takes on the media with divine and razor-sharp precision. That’s what The Wall Street Journal did, predictably claiming, “it’s squandered in a slapdash, scattershot sendup that turns almost everyone into nincompoops, trivializes everything it touches, oozes with self-delight, and becomes part of the babble and yammer it portrays.”

The slams are not all from establishment, high-circulation media outlets that traffic in the very kind of media product the film critiques. And the praise isn’t all from alternative outlets. Rolling Stone’s David Fear panned it, as did Salon, while Us magazine urged readers not to “miss out on a so-sharp-it-hurts satire that skewers our current state of politics, technology and celebrity culture within the context of an asteroid headed to Earth.”

And at The New York Times, a paper which is clearly targeted in the film — presented as the well-to-do, reputation-obsessed but click-crazy “New York Herald” — Manohla Dargis ends her positive review by accurately stating: “In the end, McKay isn’t doing much more in this movie than yelling at us, but then, we do deserve it.”

She totally gets the film, and its intent, while some of the other more well-meaning critics are focused on style and consistency. But much of the rest of the media just don’t like that they’re being exposed as adding to the paranoia and conspiracies that dominate our world and are bringing us to the brink of complete chaos.

When the people who are wearing the red hats refuse to look up at the comet, thus denying it exists, much of the media in the film treats it as a “both sides” argument — or just wants to change the subject to happier thoughts.

This is only a hunch, but I think a motivating factor for director McKay was to get the Trumpists to actually see the film. It’s filled with silly jokes that don’t land with elites but will be howled at by the “economic anxiety” crowd. And, at the outset, the Trump-like female president, played by Streep, seems in command, if vain and ridiculous, against what appear to be hyperventilating, quirky leftist scientists.

But as the film goes on, the tables turn amid all the wackiness, subtly, almost unnoticeably, and the red hats, previously not present, emerge — and many in the audience will suddenly see themselves. I think the film is brilliant in this regard, and much of the media is either missing it — looking for a payoff for an elite media audience — or can’t get over being diced up.

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