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There was a lot of press about the split up of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay in 2021. Their beef got a fair amount of attention from comedy fans who loved their work together. Ferrell is still making his comedy movies, though it feels like his star has faded a bit. Hey, it’s hard to stay on top of the film industry for years. McKay, meanwhile, has gotten into the Oscars game with political films that are only sort of comedies. While their rift is serious, I feel like they are both suffering from their time apart. For proof of that, check out Don’t Look Up.
Don’t Look Up has a star-studded cast, which is fitting for a movie about a comet heading toward Earth. We’re talking five Oscar winners in Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, and Mark Rylance. Jonah Hill has been nominated. Timothee Chalamet will likely get nominated some day, and may simply win. In spite of this cast, Don’t Look Up falls totally flat. It’s the worst film I saw in 2021.
Ultimately, the failures of Don’t Look Up fall on McKay’s shoulders. His comedies like Anchorman could be muddled and messy, but in absurdist comedy that can be accepted. In a movie like this, those issues are glaring. Don’t Like Up isn’t terribly funny. Hill is riffing like in days of yore and it’s annoying, not funny. McKay also seems to have picked up every bad directing habit possible. The editing is grating and overwhelming. It feels heavy handed and slapdash. Tonally its jarring. I watched the entire movie, and like a half dozen times I said to myself, “This just isn’t working.” There are so many good actors in Don’t Look Up, but that can’t salvage it.
Maybe McKay just isn’t capable of being a “serious” filmmaker. I mean, I don’t see his script working in anybody’s hands, but with a better director I bet this could have been a good movie. His best movies remain his comedies he made with Ferrell, whom he will likely never work with again. Speaking of Ferrell, he didn’t have a movie come out in 2021, instead doing a dramatic miniseries for Apple TV+ called The Shrink Next Door. In 2020 he had Downhill and Eurovision come out, neither of which made a mark.
For their personal lives, it would be nice if these two collaborators still worked together. For their professional lives, they might need it. After the flop of Don’t Look Up, I have zero interest in what McKay has going on going forward. It’s faults are his faults.
