This is a review of the movie Don't Look Up.

I honestly feel kind of dumb that I got suckered into watching this.

When I first saw the thumbnail description on Netflix, it was clear to me that this movie was about climate change. Specifically, that it was going to be one of those "issue movies" with hero scientists and wooden straw men for antagonists. So naturally, I avoided it like the plague.

Then, I saw on Locals that Dave Rubin was saying he was going to watch it, and "let's talk about it." So I started it. And, though the general plot was exactly what I expected, the parody of many aspects of pop culture was clever enough that, like a fool, I kept watching.

I love you, Dave, but ... gee whiz.

I can't address all the straw men in the movie, but, let's see ...

• The "threat" of climate change is NOTHING like the threat of a comet heading towards Earth and about to strike in six months. Even in the worst-case scenarios, the change is projected to take place over decades or centuries. It's not projected to be instantly fatal to all of life on earth. And it's not something "we have seen with our own eyes." It's based on a bunch of models, which differ greatly among themselves. Nor is there an obvious silver bullet which is being ignored.
• In the movie, the elites decline to deflect the comet when they can, because they think it is bringing rare-earth minerals that will allow them to "make money." This is NOT the same as when people point out that going off fossil fuels in the next 12 years will "wreck the economy." By "wreck the economy," we mean mass die-offs among poor and middle-class people, not just that the tech and political moguls of the world will lose some potential earnings. Again, the straw man is that any kind of economic argument is just greed.
• Climate skeptics' message is NOT "don't look at the evidence." It cannot be summarized as "don't look up."
• Why are all the don't-look-up-ers fat white men wearing red seed hats? O.K., I don't even need to answer that question.

It's especially ironic that for much of the movie, the herioc grad student is mocked for yelling, "We're all going to die!" (and she's right), whereas the villainous president is shown saying, "They want you to be afraid, so they can get power" (and she's wrong). I guess someone thought this was the needed counterweight to the past two years, which featured educated elites yelling "We're all going to die!" and being wrong, while somehow at the end of that time, they have ended up with a lot more power.