“Don’t look up,” becomes the political mantra of President Janine Orlean (Meryl Streep) as a comet nine kilometers wide barrels towards Earth. Without immediate intervention, there is a one-hundred percent chance of an extinction level event. But midterms are fast approaching and an opportunity to save the world and existence as we know it gets fed through the political machine, to the chagrin of actual scientists the world over. Taking aim at the Trump-era invention of “alternative facts”, Orlean encourages her followers to not believe their own eyes, spinning an impending apocalypse into a culture war in ways that are both all too far-fetched and tragically feasible.

Don’t Look Up aptly concludes Adam McKay’s trilogy of goofball politically-shaded satires, which began with The Big Short and ran through Dick Cheney biopic Vice, in that it remains true to the writer-director’s over-the-top comedic antics, while mocking and somehow both oversimplifying and overcomplicating a complex issue. In this instance, McKay creates a fictional doomsday as a way of satirizing our nonfictional political reality. Specifically, how the right side of the aisle weaponizes conspiracy theories and has turned science into a boogey man as a means of whipping up support across their base. That its satirical outlook tracks with our dystopian political reality is distressing, if not thoroughly funny.

McKay’s brand is, essentially, full brunt. He’s Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap, customizing amps to ensure that they all go to 11. It’s all very much excessive by design, especially apparent in his films’ spastic and often distracting editing choices, and anyone familiar with McKay’s work should that subtlety shouldn’t be expected. There’s a certain amount of buy-in required of a viewer willing to invest in McKay’s absurdities – which has frankly always been the case (look to comedy gold Step Brothers for exhibit A on super-amplified comedic absurdities) – and as applied to Don’t Look Up, you’re either going to be mostly onboard or thoroughly offput. I was decidedly amongst the former. Sufficed to say, this work is designed to button push in a time where sensitivities and misgivings is already running at an all-time high. There’s a certain contingent of voters sure to feel thoroughly iced by his Netflix-exclusive comedy so buyer beware.

McKay often paints with a fairly broad brush, mocking up caricatures that fail to take on dimensionality. Streep’s President Orlean for instance is a Trumpian opportunist with a derelict sense of responsibility. Who sees her duty not so much as to lead the nation as a whole but rather to stoke the undying flames of our eternal culture war. She’s quite good at this (it is Streep after all) but in our post-satire age – Trump skewed our political reality so far off the rails that satirizing politics just doesn’t seem effective any longer – it just fails to incite much other than frustration and resigned recognition. Jonah Hill as her drug-addled failchild turned chief of staff is equally a potshot at the reptilian Don Jr.’s of the world, though Hill’s over-amplified approach gels less with the whole of the movie, often seeming like he stumbled in off the set of a Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg shoot. His role fits clumsily and more often than not comes up short on laughs.

Don’t Look Up is definitively a movie with no shortage of choices, particularly from a performance perspective. Take for instance Mark Rylance’s Peter Issherwell, a mumbling billionaire tycoon who is heavy on the spectrum vibe, whose pearly white dentures are so big that he always seems to be drooling a bit. Or Ron Perlman’s cowboy astronaut, who on his mission to save Earth gives thanks to all the “hard working whites” of the world before also acknowledging the gays and brown people. Again, the satirical bite is not measured so much as dumped on. Heavily salted. A Gallagher approach that foregoes the scalpel in favor of the sledgehammer.

A scraggy Leonardo DiCaprio and loony Jennifer Lawrence balance out the preposterousness of the supporting cast as the two small-fry scientists, Dr. Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky respectively, who first discover the comet. After being blown off by the White House, the pair decides to leak the information to an alarmingly nonplussed America. Turns out that the end of the world doesn’t have the same trending appeal as celebrity breakups. The two increasingly mortified scientists embark on a media tour to win over the hearts and minds of the public, rubbing up against Cate Blanchett’s eel-like talk show host Brie Evantee and winning allies in others like Dr. Clayton Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan). A shaggy Timotheé Chalamet appears in the back half and is a comedic godsend, stealing what little scenes he’s in.

As the comet plummets towards earth, Dr. Mindy becomes wrapped up in his own rising star, his growing celebrity eclipsing his scientific duties. Absolute power corrupting and all that. Getting a seat at the table of the powerful is only fruitful when you don’t immediately fold into their campaign.

A bit long and disjointed, Don’t Look Up is like Leo’s beard in the film: shaggy and untrained. It wants to tackle so many issues – conspiracy theories, the farcical absurdities of the Republican Party, the growing anti-science movement, Cheshire Cat media personalities, cronyism, tech tycoons, late stage capitalism – and accordingly sprays its satire far and wide. McKay hits more often than not by virtue of his star power, who deliver frequent laughs, but like Perlman’s trip to the stars, it’s not an even ride throughout.

CONCLUSION: Adam McKay’s ‘Don’t Look Up’ boasts an outstanding ensemble cast with some of the biggest A-list stars on the planet to build a farcical “the sky is falling” dark comedy. The writer-director’s ambitions can exceed his grasp at times but this no-holds-barred satire still mostly collides as intended.