When Leonardo DiCaprio realizes the scale of the problem in desperate satire Do not seek, it does what most of humanity would do. He tries to erase it. The actor plays Dr Randall Mindy, a shy professor of astronomy who maps a new comet with wide-eyed pleasure. “Look at the arc,” he calls near the whiteboard to the punk colleague who discovered it, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence). Then he pauses. Ashen, Mindy erases her calculations. But there is no escaping the truth. In six months, the body will strike Earth. We are all – as is often said and at great volume – to die.

Among the unnecessary things humanity does next is make a movie: a stupid blockbuster called Total destruction. An inconvenient truth is that in 2021, Do not seek itself would make a sharper parody of the good intentions the film industry might muster in the face of disaster (climate change, say) than Total destruction.

In a clunky-toned Netflix presentation with luxurious cast, Lawrence and DiCaprio are joined in Adam McKay’s black comedy by actors including Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet and Meryl Streep. The latter naturally embodies an American president with a crass populist inclination. The film unfolds like a bitter and wacky war game. What if the world ends and everyone is looking at their phones? Except – oh no – that’s the reality.

McKay’s recent films walked freely through the 2008 financial crisis (The big court) and the career of Dick Cheney (Vice). Where next, but Armageddon? Crazy rhythms remain but now look like spinning wheels. Paralysis and empowerment as extinction looms are hard jokes to land without sounding strident, and the brush used here is wide. McKay knows it. Despite all the digging in old media, new media, and Professor Mindy’s rise to fame – some of it pretty funny – self-loathing is also in the air. It’s as if the film is aware that it won’t motivate a single finger to protest. In silence, the film could see the comet as a blessing. (Incidentally, McKay has as little to say about or to anyone outside of America as you might imagine Total destruction.)

Everything seems poised to go badly with the critics; understandable given our vast contribution to saving the planet. Even trying to match Dr Strangelove is considered a red rag because Kubrick is in a league of one. (Peter Sellers may have grudgingly admired Mark Rylance, the best thing here, as a zillionaire of frigid tech, an alloy of every Randian Silicon Valley chancellor ever made a god.) The most likely ending of this sad movie and chimerical will be to make someone unlucky a disappointment with a double Christmas ticket. It’s a wonderful life, said Frank Capra. Indeed it was, says McKay.

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In UK cinemas now and on Netflix from December 24