CAST::Leonardo DiCaprio Jennifer Lawrence  Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep

DIRECTOR: Adam McKay

BLUF

Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence) is about to have an apocalyptic comet named after her. Does it get any better than that? She’s a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University who spots the 9km-wide astral body in the Oort cloud, and her associate, Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio), is the astronomer who calculates its trajectory, a 99-point-something-something percent likelihood of it crashing into the Pacific and quickly destroying all life on Earth. Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) is a fed scientist who gets them an audience with President Janie Orlean (Streep) and her fail son/chief of staff Jason (Hill).

When watching the opening credits, you’ve got to take note of the “with” credits that come at the tail-end of such credits; when the “with”s are Streep and Blanchett, you know you’re watching THE MOVIE.

Kate, Randall, and Teddy finally get face time with Madam (love that though) President who is told that a “planet killer” comet with the strength of “a billion Hiroshima bombs” will destroy Earth in six months, and apart from not really paying them much attention, on the advice of her failson Jason(Jonah Hill) the President asks them to “sit tight and assess” the situation. After all, Mich State is barely an Ivy League. Who cares if they have the best astronomy department in the world. We also meet Peter Isherwell (Rylance), a cell phone tycoon with just the most luminous fake teeth ever.

And of course the whole impact on the midterms.

Randall and Kate get into a chat circuit whose two hosts (Blanchett and Perry) can’t take anything seriously, especially the end times. Randall becomes the “sexy astronomer” on magazine covers, while Kate’s tearful and angry plea gets her meme’d to her degree of agitation at not being heard. The POTUS eventually comes around since the comet keeps getting bigger and closer and a plan to deflect the comet with nukes is derailed; the cell phone guy exerts his influence and they all plan for their life afterlife to end on earth in cryo space.

IN THE KNOW

McKay’s screenplays are always excellent for several big laughs, and the long list of Hollywood VIPs is just the icing on the cake. McKay takes aim at Trump rallies, social media and reality-TV frippery, the slow creep of ethical compromise in news media, political nepotism, isolated billionaires, the growing global influence of Big Tech, science denialism all of it so true of the state of our country and hits home on every issue in this satire.

Cannot begin to tell you guys the importance of this movie. We must talk about it.