Screen Time

‘Don’t Look Up’ may be best film partially shot in HollyWoo

Craig S. Semon

Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Not only is “Don’t Look Up” arguably the best movie of the year, it is definitely the best movie to have scenes filmed in Worcester.

Not only did the film’s director and screenwriter grow up in Worcester, Adam McKay is the only person I can think of who has strong ties to Worcester that has won an Academy Award. And, mark my words, he will be nominated for three more this spring.

McKay, who won the best adapted screenplay Oscar for “The Big Short” (and was nominated for Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture for the Dick Cheney biopic “Vice”), is a shoo-in for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture noms for “Don’t Look Up.”

And, I wouldn’t be surprised if three-time Academy Awardwinner Meryl Streep, two-time Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett, Academy Award winners Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Mark Rylance, and Academy Awardnominated Jonah Hill are all nominated for Oscars for their stellar performances in “Don’t Look Up.”

With an amazing roster of Alist Hollywood elite at his disposal, McKay was way on his way to make a disaster movie on global warning that even Al Gore and Greta Thunberg could love.

Then, COVID hit.

And with the pandemic, McKay’s Nostradamus-like apocalyptical predictions were coming true at an alarming rate. People were arguing hard science and denying concrete data as the pandemic became political.

Bringing together some of the best elements of Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” Sidney Lumet’s “Network,” Barry Levinson’s “Wag the Dog” and Mike Judge’s underrated “Idiocracy,” as well as tongue-in-cheek references to Michael Bay’s “Armageddon,” the unmemorable ’70s disaster flick “Meteor,” George Pal’s ’50s sci-fi classic “When Worlds Collide,” Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” and even, for a brief instant, Irwin Allen’s soggy killer bees saga “The Swarm,” McKay delivers a scathing, social commentary and black comedy for our times.

If you have a chance, run, don’t walk and see “Don’t Look Up” on the big screen when it opens this weekend.

Coincidentally, Lawrence starred and was nominated for Oscar gold for “American Hustle,” which, prior to “Don’t Look Up,” was previously the best movie to have scenes filmed in Worcester.

“American Hustle” was loosely inspired by the ABSCAM scandal in the late ’70s and early ’80s. But if you’re not familiar with ABSCAM or even the ’70s, you won’t have any problem enjoying this flick.

Sometimes gritty, sometimes zany, always entertaining, “American Hustle” has it all: quirky characters, cool music, killer lines, over-the-top ’70s clothes, as well as crosses, double-crosses, combustible love triangles and a chilling Robert De Niro cameo that, alone, is worth the price of admission.

And, in “American Hustle,” Lawrence (whose character in the film is aptly described as “the Picasso of passive aggressive karate”) steals the show. But she has a lot of competition in “Don’t Look Up” to achieve that honor again.

While none of Lawrence’s scenes in “Don’t Look Up” was filmed in Worcester, she does have a back-alley make-out scene with Paul Atreides (aka Timothée Chalamet from Denis Villeneuve’s new “Dune,” NOT Kyle MacLachlan from the David Lynch’s original “Dune”) on top of a graffiti-covered restaurant booth sofa, courtesy of Westerman Prop Warehouse of Worcester.

In another memorable, totally stressed out role that continues her winning streak with her Academy Award-winning role in “Silver Linings Playbook” (based on one-time Holden resident Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel) and Oscarnominated role in “American Hustle,” Lawrence plays Michigan State Ph.D. astronomy candidate Kate Dibiasky, whose daily routine consists of sipping hot tea, spreading jelly on toast, singing explicit lyrics to Wu Tang Clan songs she listens to on her earbuds, confiding with her Carl Sagan action fiction and analyzing data from a high-powered telescope.

When she discovers a comet orbiting within the solar system, Lawrence shares her discovery with her bespectacled, bearded, Xanax-popping, panic attack-prone, worn-out corduroy-wearing professor/mentor, Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio, playing against type). After repeated mathematical calculations with hard, concrete scientific data, Mindy and Dibiasky conclude with 100 percent certainty that a “planet-killer” the size of Mount Everest is going to make a direct hit of Earth in six months and 14 days and wipe out every living creature on the planet.

And, the laughs keep on coming.

DiCaprio and Lawrence reach out to Dr. “Teddy” Oglethorpe (played by Rob Morgan), the head of Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA, who sets up a meeting with the president of the United States, played with cold, calculating and cunning conviction by no other than Meryl Streep (instead of “The Devil Wears Prada,” you have the POTUS wears Armani) and her kiss-up and condescending, mama’s boy Chief of Staff played by a scene-stealing (and possibly Supporting Acting Oscar stealing) Jonah Hill.

DiCaprio’s scientific predictions of mile-high tsunamis and the impact having the power of a billion Hiroshima bombs are mocked and shrugged off by both Streep and Hill and they dismiss their scientific findings with the presidential order, “We sit tight and access.”

To get the word out, the three scientists embark on a whirlwind media tour, which includes leaking the story to a “Gray Lady” doppelganger (called the New York Herald) and appearing on “The Daily Rip,” a popular but totally vapid morning show hosted by overly cheery Brie and Jack (both wonderfully played by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry).

After the hosts make light of humanity’s dire predicament, Lawrence snaps, “Are we not

From left, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet star in "Don't Look Up."

NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX