We’re heading into Oscars weekend, and looking at all the nominees, it’s a stacked card this year. One of the movies I’ve got an eye on is One Battle After Another. Leonardo DiCaprio is the star of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 10th movie. Overall, the film has racked up 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Anderson and Best Actor for DiCaprio.

These past weeks, I’ve been inundated with Oscar-themed emails pitching different streaming suggestions tied to the glitzy ceremony. I decided to home in here and discuss one of DiCaprio’s less appreciated movies. It’s a film that was the beginning of what I like to refer to as “DiCaprio’s Schlubby Era.”

This movie features an absolutely stacked cast and delivers its message loud and clear. I rewatched it last night, and I still found it thoroughly entertaining. I’m in the minority, though. You see, the film I’m talking about was a victim of circumstance, as it lifted a mirror to society at a terribly fraught time.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. It was directed by Adam McKay, and while it is absolutely a comedy, the disaster satire hit streaming at the wrong time. If you don’t recall, the film — which was meant as a dire warning about climate change and society’s apathetic response to it — hit the streamer at the height of the pandemic. 

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Everyone was stuck inside, looking for light-hearted, feel-good entertainment like Ted Lasso. A movie about a pending catastrophe that would end the world and its entire population was a tough pill to swallow. Perhaps it still is? I’ll circle back to that thought in a bit.

Needless to say, it was sharply panned by critics for its subject matter and tone. Don’t Look Up received four Oscar nominations, and even if you think about the lackluster affair that was the 2022 Academy Awards, it showed there is merit to the polarizing comedy. And I’m going to 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 relay the urgency of their discovery of a giant comet barrelling toward Earth. In roughly six months, an extinction-level event triggered by the comet’s impact will obliterate humanity and the planet.

Mindy and DiBiasky face an unexpected uphill battle, though. Each person in power they speak to, from the news media to the President of the United States, ends up downplaying the warning. Instead of focusing on the well-being of the American people, they end up focusing on how the pending disaster can ultimately benefit them.

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

As bleak as this reveal is, the movie carries a sort of gallows humor married to a tongue-in-cheek aesthetic that is both laugh-inducing and cringeworthy. The end is bleak, with no real clear lesson aside from the hammer-to-the-head message to, actually, look up and be present. It’s all still very much relatable nearly half a decade later.

A big reason I find Don’t Look Up more than watchable is the performances of DiCaprio and Lawrence, both stepping outside of their proverbial boxes to play homely underdogs. 

This is the beginning of DiCaprio’s exploration of unkempt characters, in which he has played against glamorous type and shown new levels of range. It’s commendable to see an actor of his stature stretch himself out of his comfort zone — which, in turn, tests the comfort levels of the audiences tuning in.

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

Lawrence is fantastic as his outspoken student, who takes everyone to task, including the president. And then there’s the rest of the excellent cast, which includes (deep breath): Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Melanie Lynskey and Michael Chiklis. 

I’m not going to get lost in the minutiae of everything going on in today’s world that Don’t Look Up relates to. But it’s worth noting that, while this is a movie about climate change, the story can apply to a whole mess of things, from the war in the Middle East to the rise of AI and the proliferation of misinformation to the masses.

Since the movie premiered on Netflix, other apocalyptic entertainment has come along, like Fallout, Silo, Paradise and the later seasons of The Boys, which have tapped into similar themes with greater success.

You’re going to see a lot of recommendations online pointing you to Leonardo DiCaprio’s biggest movies, with guidance to watch them because of his latest Oscar nomination. I could’ve done that (heck, I nearly 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 movie that doesn’t coddle the audience; instead, it pokes fun at us. We’ve all, at one point, fallen victim to quick dopamine fixes that distract from our day-to-day reality. 

Don’t Look Up is a smack in the face, shouting at us to thwart that behavior and take action, and its dark ending further nails that message home. It may have missed the mark when it was initially released, but this comedy has all the components of a genre classic that gets better with age.

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