Don't Look Up Is Weak Broth

 Oh, all my peppy young readers! All you who are up-to-date on everything! I usually envy the fuck outta you, but not today.

Over the weekend, Mr. J and I sat down to watch this new movie called "Don't Look Up." We watched and watched and watched. And then the cable signal went out (as it often does).

Usually when the cable signal goes out, we collectively groan and fuss like two old doddering wrecks.

In this case we were 90 minutes or more into the movie, and suddenly it just wasn't there, and we didn't care.

Sorry, striplings, but that movie was so boring I won't ever watch the rest of it.

I get it, I get it. Filmmakers want to say something important about the flaws in our society. Hey, I do too! I've been writing this blog since 2005! But, as Hamlet said, "brevity is the soul of wit." Drawl on too long, you lose the crowd.

Forced to make conversation amidst the silence, I said to Mr. J: "Anyone who has ever seen 'Dr. Strangelove' would hate 'Don't Look Up'."

EXHIBIT A: "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love the Bomb"

"Dr. Strangelove" was released in 1964 and is about the end of the world. It was written, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick before he, too, went off the rails and started making 3 hour movies.

"Dr. Strangelove" clocks in at 95 minutes and covers all the ground that "Don't Look Up" covers except the billionaires, of which there were fewer in 1964. It's a succinct, hilarious comedy founded on the tragic possibilities of nuclear annihilation. And if you minty fresh young'uns don't think nuclear war was as much of a threat as climate change, well. You don't know what it was like in 1964. 

How many roles did Peter Sellers play in  "Dr. Strangelove?" I think three. Yep, I'm counting three.

I'm not making light of climate change here, my pets. I'm making light of heavy-handed, didactic filmmaking. "Don't Look Up" is too long. It loses steam. At the 90 minute mark I was rooting for the asteroid.

If you've never seen "Dr. Strangelove," I recommend it wholeheartedly. I'll bet I've watched it seven or eight times, including as part of some foofy college course I took at JHU.

The moral of this sermon: If you find yourself with time on your hands on a Saturday night and a vague worry about how human fuckups could bring about the end of the world, your go-to film should be "Dr. Strangelove." Not "Don't Look Up."

This is free advice, and it's good. You'll most likely thank me, if you like this blog.