Part of the problem is miscasting. Jennifer Lawrence is playing a grad student in astronomy who leans goth and ends up with a skater boi (Timothee Chalamet) . The role is so insipid and underwritten, I'm not sure anyone could play it; maybe Mia Goth, Zooey Deutsch, or Saoirse Ronan. Ms. Lawrence is still too much the apple cheeked Abercrombie & Fitch model to convince as a punkish, geek genius who discovers a killer comet, even with a hair tint and a few nose rings. Leonardo DiCaprio plays her professor, a naïve nebbish and fellow science nerd. Leo has too much charisma to bother trying to tamp it down. He is most at home when he can swagger: as Howard Hughes, Gatsby, or Wolfie. Come to think of it, if Jonah Hill and Leo had exchanged roles in Don't Look Up, the results might have been more interesting. DiCaprio and Hill generate more laughs in one scene in The Wolf of Wall Street than in the entirety of this film.
Another problem is the film feels dated. Streep impersonates Sarah Palin and Cate Blanchett, Megyn Kelly. Don't Look Up is a Trump era satire about climate change denial, but, hopefully, we are out of the Trump Era. McKay pads the film with shots of nature and people of all nations, as befitting the global resonance attempted by the film. McKay once showed he could generate a pleasant comic camaraderie (Anchorman), but, despite an attempt to evoke family, this is not achieved in Don't Look Up. A look at the initial Oval Office scene in the film gives a clue as to why. Frantic editing can't generate amusement or even any sense of cohesion amongst actors performing on the same sound stage.
The CGI space bits add more padding. McKay even tries to invoke satiric cinematic classics, but all we get are feeble echoes of Dr. Strangelove and Network. I did enjoy the performances of Melanie Lynskey, Mr. Chalamet, and, especially, Mark Rylance. Nevertheless, considering the talent involved, Don't Look Up is thin gruel.
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