Death to 2020 (2020)

Death to 2020 (2020)

8/10

Starring

Samuel L. Jackson

Hugh Grant

Lisa Kudrow

Leslie Jones

Directed by Al Campbell and Alice Mathias

I think 2021 is off to a good start for me. I made a wish, and it came true. In a chat group with my friends, I wished that someone would just do a movie about 2020. The reason for that wish was because some of the most unimaginable things happened in 2020, and I was wondering if a record of the highlights of the most messed-up year so far in my life could be documented for me.

A friend came through for me and said I should see the movie Death to 2020. He didn’t drop any spoilers, so I was shocked when I found out it wasn’t a movie, but a documentary (mockumentary) about the year 2020. It’s as brilliantly funny as a comedy movie can be, and for me, a masterpiece of filmmaking about the year before. It captures everything, down to December 2020.

For me, the best thing to see on 1st January 2021, the first day of a new year, is this work done in a mockumentary format by Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones. It’s an original Netflix production streaming on their platform. My only criticism is that it lacks coverage of things happening outside the U.S. and the U.K. I guess if it had covered everything, then the running time of this production would’ve taken away from how they were able to compact the funniest and silliest moments of 2020 while still sticking to the facts of how things happened. But I felt they could’ve done a quick mention of things happening in other places.

It starts with coverage of the Oscars, climate change meetings, and the Covid-19 pandemic kicking off, along with the denial of many of its existence. We see how some countries had already started implementing lockdowns while others ignored it, feeling they were immune. We also see how Boris Johnson made a mockery of himself, something I don’t think will end in 2021, and how Trump also made a mockery of the situation and messed it up in the most iconic way—remember the bleach injection and shining light under people’s skin? (Which can also be interpreted as shining light up people’s asses.)

The Black Lives Matter movement is also part of this production, as well as the whole white people calling the police on black people for just doing regular things. The U.S. presidential election is also covered, along with the funny moments after Joe Biden won, with all the lawsuits and the very weird Rudy. We also get to the end of December in this documentary, showing the Covid-19 vaccine production and administration.

The movie features numerous well-known actors as experts in various fields and average people. They’ve been given comedic lines to make what they are saying easier to swallow, as we address the really serious matters of 2020 that caused the whole world to stay at home for months and killed hundreds of thousands.

2021 is starting, and I hope the whole vaccine production and administration will be done swiftly across the world so we can all get back to normal.

Here’s a movie for the archives, which details all the craziness that 2020 offered us.