Adam McKay is not a film maker who revels in subtleties. He has a message to share with the world and, by damn, using some of the biggest celebrity drawcards, he’s going to send it — even if he has to bludgeon you with it.
Though most of the jokes in his new political satirical comedy fall a little flat — and personally, I think Meryl Streep is just awful at being her own version of Donald Trump — there are some really good moments in the film.
One favourite is when Mark Rylance, who plays Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Isherwell, is on screen. The second is the song, Just Look Up, at the end of the film sung by Ariana Grande, who plays pop star Riley Bina, and Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi), who plays DJ Chello,
Pay particular attention to the lyrics. Half the world, convinced by the propagandist messages of the president, her son and Isherwell, believe that the coming comet is nothing but a conspiracy theory.
The President Orlean and son are too worried about their coming polls to care about an imminent catastrophe and Isherwell, in his droll, monotone speaking style, only cares about making a buck or billion from the valuable resources available on the comet.
The conspiracy theorists are the “Don’t Look Uppers” and the other half of the world, who believe the scientists, are the “Look Uppers”. Expecting the catastrophe to be about to unfold, Grande delivers the lines:
Look up, what he’s really trying to say / Is get your head out of your ass /Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists / We really fucked it up this time/ It’s so close I can feel the heat big time / You can act like everything is alright but this is probably happening in real-time.”
Later, she sings about doing “whatever it takes to get you through the mess that we made / Cause, tomorrow may never come”.
This song is written by Grande, composer Nicholas Britell, lyricist Taura Stinson and Mescudi, who added his own rap to the tune.
Britell said he was immediately bowled over when he received Stinson’s lyrics. “It was such a tricky thing to pull off,” he said. “It has to be a sincere love song, and it has to really feel like a good song. This is a comedy, but the song isn’t a joke song — it’s a sincere, real song that happens to express this absurd explanation of what is happening. I was wondering how we were going to do that — but when she sent the lyrics over, I was literally like, ‘Oh, that’s how we do it’.”
Though the film definitely has its moments, in the end the cast of repugnant characters and gullible humans will have you rooting for the comet.
