Netflix’s star-spangled Don’t Look Up is the new comedy from Adam McKay. For the film, he ropes in Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence to play scientists trying to tell the world about a “planet-killing” comet that’s coming for us, and Meryl Streep as the POTUS who’s more concerned about the polls than Armageddon. Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence) is about to have an apocalyptic comet named after her. She’s a PhD candidate at Michigan State University who spots the astral body in the Oort cloud, and her associate, Dr Randall Mindy (DiCaprio), is the astronomer who calculated its trajectory, a probability of it slamming into the Pacific off the coast of Chile and quickly extinguishing 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 chief of staff Jason (Hill). Prior to the meeting, Kate and Randall are so nervous. When Kate, Randall and Teddy finally get face time with Madam President, Randall tells her that a “planet killer” comet with the strength of “a billion Hiroshima bombs” will destroy Earth in six months, and she says they just have to “sit tight and assess” the situation. About a third of the way into the movie, its cynical fatalism kicks in, and we grow weary of its conspicuous overtures.