Buy the DVD:

An Inconvenient Truth

The White House is sure to spin everything contained in “An Inconvenient Truth” as theory rather than fact. They’ll stand by the belief that trying to curb global warming will ruin the American economy without salvaging anything. Nothing good will come from curbing our fossil fuel use, or buying eco-friendly products, or simply letting scientists do research instead of intimidating them to side with the oil companies. It isn’t worth preventing the ice caps from melting, submerging New York, Amsterdam, Shanghai and other major cities. This administration believes that Americans are too self-absorbed to sacrifice modern conveniences to prevent the planet’s total destruction. And they might be correct. But Al Gore makes a valiant effort in the film and his daily crusade to help spread the truth about global warming.

Stylistically, the film is standard documentary fare. Gore narrates while images and statistics flash on screen illustrating his points. Most of the film shown is a Gore-led lecture, with sparse interruptions for various insights. While the film examines the issues that threaten our planet, it’s as much a glorification of Al Gore as a humanitarian. We are presented not only with facts, but Gore’s own journey and his reason for wanting to educate the public on the gravity of our wastefulness. We see short personal insights into Gore’s life, including his 2000 election defeat, his sister who died from lung cancer and his son’s near fatal car accident. This is mirrored with a segment on the current administration’s ties to oil companies, and the auto industry’s crusade against electric cars, which would cut into the profit margins of gasoline. But we also see, starting with an influential science teacher, how Gore cared about the planet long before he entered politics, and it is the current state of politics and his own personal circumstance which have spurred his return to activism.

The film is a barrage of raw facts on climate change and the reasons behind them, some of which are shocking. Most charts on screen show a huge upsurge in carbon dioxide emissions, scorching temperatures, even changing animal cycles. One interesting sequence shows that birds lay eggs that hatch at the same time caterpillars emerge, providing nourishment to the baby birds. But due to rising global temperatures, caterpillars come out earlier, while the bird eggs hatch at roughly the same time. Therefore, the caterpillars are already gone by the birds’ birth, leaving them without food.

Much of the information is repeated throughout; it could have been a 60-minute film instead of 100 minutes, and much of the personal insight into Gore’s life and opinion could have been omitted. However you can’t fault director David Guggenheim for simply wanting to hammer home the points and promote Al Gore. The man deserves it after what he has been through, and the film almost makes him seem like he could be the savior of the planet if given a national platform. A current report just released by The National Academy of Sciences confirms most of the facts in the film, yet another slap in The Bush Administration’s face. The film reveals the unsurprising fact that all scientists agree on the pressing problems global warming present. The only debate on the issue has come from the masterful Republican machine, whose unfortunate powerful media spin has kept the issue under the radar.

If anything, it’s worth seeing the film just to find out what Al Gore has been up to the past few years. But you’ll have fun comparing the facts to disaster films like “The Day After Tomorrow,” and the subsequent realization that at our rate, it won’t be long before all of those things happen.

Written by: Jason Villemez

Reviewers Rating: 7.5
Reader's Rating: 6.44
Reader's Votes: 16

Rate It