Before ‘One War After Another,’ Leonardo DiCaprio Was A Fun Mess In This Netflix Satire

We are entering Oscars weekendand looking at all the nominees, it’s a stacked card this year. One of the movies I watched was this One Battle After Another. Leonardo DiCaprio is the star of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 10th film. In total, the film was nominated by 13 people, including Best Picture, Best Director for Anderson and Best Actor for DiCaprio.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been inundated with Oscar-themed emails featuring various streaming suggestions for the wonderful event. I decided to go home here and discuss one of DiCaprio’s most underrated movies. The film that was the beginning of what I like to refer to as “DiCaprio’s Schlubby Era.”

The film has a perfectly stacked cast and delivers its message loud and clear. I watched it again last night, and I still find it very entertaining. However, I am in the minority. You see, the film I’m talking about was a victim of circumstances, as it held up a mirror to society at a very difficult time.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about Netflix Don’t Look Up. It’s directed by Adam McKay, and while it’s entirely a comedy, the satire of tragedy was delivered at the wrong time. If you don’t remember, the film – which was intended as a dire warning about climate change and the public’s apathetic response to it – hit the airwaves at the height of the pandemic.

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Everyone was stuck inside, looking for light-hearted, feel-good entertainment Ted Lasso. A film about a disaster that was about to end the world and its population was a tough pill to swallow. Maybe still? I’ll come back to that thought in a bit.

Needless to say, it was heavily criticized by critics for its title and tone. Don’t Look Up received four Oscar nominations, and even if you think about the lack of a story that was the Academy Awards of 2022, it showed that there is merit in the divisive comedy. And I will talk about it.

Don’t Look Up follows scientist Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) and his PhD student Kate DiBiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) as they try to convey the urgency of their discovery of a comet to Earth. In about six months, an extinction-level event triggered by a comet impact will wipe out humanity and the planet.

Mindy and DiBiasky face an unexpected battle, though. Every official they talk to, from the media to the President of the United States, ends up belittling the warning. Instead of focusing on the well-being of the American people, they end up focusing on how this pending crisis will ultimately benefit them.

In turn, the media and the government end up lying to the people. Sound familiar?

Despite this bleakness, the movie carries a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor that’s both laugh-out-loud and relatable. The ending is murky, with no clear lesson other than a hammer-to-the-head message to, in fact, look up and be present. It’s all still very relevant nearly half a decade later.

The main reason why I find Don’t Look Up more than watchable are the performances of DiCaprio and Lawrence, both stepping outside their proverbial boxes to play the home underdogs.

This is the beginning of DiCaprio’s exploration of dirty characters, where he played against the good type and showed new levels of range. It’s great to see an actor of his caliber step out of his comfort zone — in turn, testing the comfort levels of the tuning in audience.

He would continue this trend in Killers of the Flower Moon and One War After Another.

Lawrence is great as his outspoken understudy, who catches everyone off guard, including the president. And then there’s the rest of the cast, including (deep breath): Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Melanie Lynskey and Michael Chiklis.

I can’t lose a few minutes of everything happening in today’s world that has to do with Don’t Look Up. However, it is important to note that, although this is a film about climate change, the story can be applied to all kinds of disasters, from the war in the Middle East to the rise of AI and the spread of misinformation to the masses.

Since the film was shown on Netflix, other apocalyptic entertainments have appeared, like him It fallsbeast, Paradise and later periods of Boyswhich have tapped into similar themes with great success.

You will see many recommendations on the Internet that point you to the great movies of Leonardo DiCaprio, with a guide to watch them because of his recent Oscar nomination. I could do that (heck, I probably did, but The Wolf of Wall Street is no longer on Netflix).

Instead, it felt like the perfect time to revisit Don’t Look Up.

This is a film that does not hold an audience; rather, it is funny to us. We have all, at one point or another, fallen victim to a dopamine rush that disrupts our everyday reality.

Don’t Look Up is a slap in the face, screaming for us to stop that behavior and take action, and its dark ending further nails that message home. It may have missed the mark when it was first released, but this comedy has all the makings of a classic that only gets better with age.

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