Film

Don't Look Up

Name: Don't Look Up
Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction, Drama
Released: 2021
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Rob Morgan

Adam McKay's shaggy, starry satire turns the climate crisis into a doomsday comedy: two scientists discover a civilization-ending comet and can't get anyone to care. It's broad, sometimes wildly uneven, but it swings big — part disaster movie, part media satire, part scream into the void. Funniest when it's furious, and clearly made by people who are.

TMDb rating

7.1

If you liked this

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb1964

Kubrick's Cold War satire is the gold standard for laughing at the end of the world — a room full of powerful idiots deciding humanity's fate while nobody in charge takes it seriously. Sharper and funnier than almost anything since.

But Black-and-white and stagey, with Cold War specifics that may need a little context.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb poster

The Big Short2015

McKay's own dry run for this exact trick — breaking the fourth wall, casting movie stars as doomed experts, turning incomprehensible catastrophe into propulsive, angry comedy. If you liked the tone here, this is where it started.

But The financial jargon is dense, and the fourth-wall gimmicks can feel showy on a rewatch.

Network1976

The original media-apocalypse satire: a news anchor's on-air meltdown becomes a ratings goldmine, and nobody with power thinks to stop it. Fifty years on, it still predicts the news cycle with eerie precision.

But The pacing is theatrical and slow by modern standards, built for monologues, not momentum.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire1961

Same premise — experts warning an indifferent public about planetary catastrophe via the press — but played as a sincere, suspenseful thriller instead of a satire, decades before the joke got made.

Long before Don't Look Up, this British thriller had journalists trying to convince a bored public that the world was actually ending. Played dead straight, it's tense, atmospheric, and unnervingly plausible even sixty years on.

But Slow by modern pacing standards, and its black-and-white photography and effects show their sixty years.

Idiocracy2006

A dumber, cruder cousin — society doesn't ignore the crisis so much as become too stupid to notice one. If Don't Look Up made you laugh through gritted teeth, this one just laughs.

But Broad, juvenile, and occasionally mean-spirited about the very people it claims to be satirizing, which can wear thin.

Wag the Dog1997

A slyer, meaner satire about manufacturing a story to distract the public — spin doctors invent a war instead of ignoring a comet. Same cynicism about media and power, tighter and nastier.

But Its target — 90s political scandal culture — feels distant if you didn't live through it.

Vice2018

McKay again, this time turning Dick Cheney's rise into a gleeful, fourth-wall-breaking comic tragedy. Same restless visual tricks and barely-contained fury at people who quietly ruin the world.

But Christian Bale's transformation is a marvel, but the tonal whiplash between farce and horror won't land for everyone.

The Death of Stalin2017

Politicians scrambling to save their own skins while ignoring the actual crisis, played as a pitch-black farce. Armando Iannucci proves terror and comedy can share the exact same scene.

But Requires some patience with rapid-fire British ensemble comedy and a fair bit of Soviet history.

Bombshell2019

A starrier, glossier look at how a broken media machine decides what matters and what doesn't — this time inside a cable news network eating itself alive from within.

But Plays it straighter and more soberly than Don't Look Up, with less satire and more slow-burn drama.

Thank You for Smoking2005

A charming spin doctor defends the tobacco industry with the same shameless media savvy the politicians in Don't Look Up deploy against a comet. Funny, cynical, and quietly damning.

But Its satire is gentler and more character-driven, lacking the apocalyptic stakes or all-star ensemble cast.

When the Wind Blows1986

Both are about ordinary people failing to grasp an approaching catastrophe, but this one strips out every joke and every celebrity, leaving just the quiet horror of not understanding what's coming.

This quiet, devastating British animation follows an elderly couple calmly preparing for nuclear war using outdated civil-defense advice, utterly unaware they're doomed. It's the tragic mirror image of comic apocalypse denial.

But No jokes, no stars, no relief — just a slow, unbearable descent that will genuinely upset you.

Death to 20202020no page yet

Same starry, satirical anger at collective denial in the face of real crisis, but delivered as a fake-documentary comedy special rather than a scripted film, aimed at events that actually happened.

A mockumentary clipping together fake talking heads reacting to the actual chaos of 2020 — pandemic denial, media spin, government dithering — same starry, sketch-comedy energy, but as fake documentary instead of drama.

But Very topical and already dated — jokes tied to a specific news cycle age fast.