Don’t just watch a movie; understand it. Don’t just hear a song; consider what it has to say. On The Review, writers and guests discuss how we entertain ourselves, and how that defines the way we see the world. Join The Atlantic’s writers as they break down a work of pop culture each week, exploring the big questions that great art can provoke, making some recommendations for you, and having a little fun along the way.
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Don’t just watch a movie; understand it. Don’t just hear a song; consider what it has to say. On The Review, writers and guests discuss how we entertain ourselves, and how that defines the way we see the world. Join The Atlantic’s writers as they break down a work of pop culture each week, exploring the big questions that great art can provoke, making some recommendations for you, and having a little fun along the way.
Adam McKay’s disaster satire is many things at once: a parable of our distracted society, a primal scream of a warning, and a broad comedy from the writer/director of Anchorman. Such a delicate balance has made the star-studded Netflix film a polarizing movie.
Critics, audiences, and activists have both savaged and praised the movie, with cycles of backlash highlighting the difficulty of sending a funny yet urgent message. But of course, isn’t that what political satires have done for decades? Or has reality become so absurd that it’s now beyond parody?
As McKay told David Sims, he wrote the story about a planet-killing comet (and our society’s inability to act collectively to stop it) as a climate change metaphor. But after the script was done, production shut down for the pandemic and he watched the follies of a real disaster surpass his fictional one. Sophie Gilbert, Spencer Kornhaber, and David Sims unpack Don’t Look Up and whether modern satire can make a difference.
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The Review
Don’t just watch a movie; understand it. Don’t just hear a song; consider what it has to say. On The Review, writers and guests discuss how we entertain ourselves, and how that defines the way we see the world. Join The Atlantic’s writers as they break down a work of pop culture each week, exploring the big questions that great art can provoke, making some recommendations for you, and having a little fun along the way.
