While corporate media reviewers continue to trash Don't Look Up, saying, "Don't see this film!" (Nathan Robinson has a nice rundown of the corporate media trashings in his journal Current Affairs, though he remains on my shit list for his anti-labor position with respect to that journal he owns), we now have a review from Lawyers, Guns & Money blog, which I consider best of the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) bloggers.
For the first 40% of the long review, Abigail Nussbaum (background here) has to shine up her PMC credentials, lest too many of her ultimately Team Democratic! (TM) audience would not read the piece she wrote at all. For the first 40% of her review, she wrote in a manner that would lead the LGM readers--and me, too--to believe she was going to trash the film. Early on, she trashed JoJo Rabbit, saying it was "a film that bravely satirizes that Nazis by… making the same jokes about them that people were making in 1942." Yet, her point at the end of her ultimately defensive review is that maybe satire doesn't work without direct action, as if that is some amazing insight. To which I say to Nussbaum, No shit, Sherlock. Nussbaum obviously herself missed the Tom Lehrer song from 1964, Folk Song Army, where Lehrer sings at one point, "though (Franco) had won all the battles, we had all the good songs!"*
Nonetheless, Nussbaum made me feel much better about her comprehension abilities a bit later in her review, with her praise for Ianucci's brilliant The Death of the Stalin. It is only then Nussbaum is finally ready to admit to her largely anti-Bernie, pro-PMC Democratic LGM audience that Don't Look Up is actually a pretty powerful film.
Late in the piece, in an entire paragraph parenthesis (!)--which proves her overall defensiveness with the main LGM proprietors (excepting Erik Loomis)--Nussbaum noted how the Don't Look Up's narrative doesn't even bother with liberals or moderate Democratic Party officials or pundits. She astutely recognized McKay already knows how inept and feckless those particular officials and pundits are. Still, she had to be gentle in making that point, or else LGM proprietors, Scott Limieux and Paul Campos, would get upset, as they are prime interference runners for the Democratic Patty. Nussbaum knows, too, the LGM proprietors hate David Sirota, so she gently said in that parenthesis paragraph how there is a "prurient fascination" for the film because of Sirota's backing. I sense Nussbaum knew that, if she had revealed Sirota is the one who came up with the idea for the film with his friend, and fellow Bernie backer, Adam McKay, the LGM "base" would not see the film at all. If my speculation is correct, great for Nussbaum! She really knew her main audience. :)
For me, I am with Nathan Robinson that the corporate media reviews trashing the film are proving the main point the film makes regarding corporate owned media. Nussbaum sees this as well, as I read her overall review.
As I final note, I just wish some of the relatively few people who see the greatness in this film will go back and watch Anchorman 2, the McKay film with Will Farrell, as that film is a devastating take down of cable "news" in general. Most people, including those who should know better, missed that film completely. Corporate media reviewers consciously miss McKay's consistent combination of lowbrow/highbrow humor, and McKay did that as well in Talladega Nights, or the Legend of Ricky Bobby. That film has to be one of the most brilliant films regarding white southern American culture ever created, right up there with O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the most underrated film of the past half century, Life.
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*Those of us who love Phil Ochs have known that point since, well, 1970. The same for any of us who has ever heard a religious person (usually a white woman) tell us how much that religious person swoons over John Lennon's Imagine. To me, it is what Lehrer says in his intro to Folk Song Army, folk songs--and I would add satire--make those of us who already know feel good that someone with more power than we have is at least noticing, too. It is what I would tell people at the dawn of the 21st Century about why I revered Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. I would say, "Finally! Someone on television is saying what I think and believe!"
UPDATE: Jan 1, 2022. Here is Forbes' magazine (!) noting the dichotomy between sneering reviews in corporate owned media and climate oriented scientists who loved the film. It shows what I say, which, sadly, satire is often only appreciated by those who know already. But, the sneering corporate media critics is important to note because they are trying to literally say, "Don't Look Up!" and don't want you to know how complicit they are. I wrote an email last evening to the African-American woman (!) corporate media critic for The Daily Beast who tore into the film, used a right trope against McKay that was used against Al Gore at the time of An Inconvenient Truth (as in how much fossil fuels were spent in making the film?), and then ignorantly said at the end of her review, maybe McKay should make a film about media in "late-stage capitalism." Yeah, she used that phrase to show us her education and awareness of what happens around her, which she is now telling us to keep our ears and eyes closed to avoid facing reality. I emailed her to say he already did make that film, and it was called Anchorman 2.
