Release Date: 26 October 2006

READ OUR REVIEW ON THE ORIGINAL AL GORE'S BOOK

Synopsis :

Al Gore, former Vice President of the USA is back in the spotlight. Stemming from a global-warming lecture that he has been delivering worldwide, this Sundance hit documentary (from veteran Director Davis Guggenheim) vividly displays the potential effects of climate change.

Movie Review:

Name me a feature documentary that depicts an environmental problem.

There aren’t many around. One reason for this is because stuff like pollution and global warming, though having some visceral effect on the audience, does not engage the individual as piquantly as documentaries like Fast Food Nation or Super-size Me – the latter includes a girlfriend’s testimony on the down-sizing effect of fast food bingeing on one’s libido.

However, An Inconvenient Truth is one of those rare films that supersede the audience’s liking for the protagonist and its actual production values. Strictly speaking, this film is not a documentary but a lecture recording spliced in with some contrived low-res snippets of Al Gore’s personal life and the stuff that made him the man he is today, with a no small dollop of self-aggrandizement and myth-making bravura (including a silhouette shot of Gore’s back in the foreground and Hurricane Katrina in the background). Similarly, while the movie tries to be discreet with its finger-pointing, the audience will be able to pick out the potshots at the Bush administration and hints at “what-it-could-have-beens” if Al Gore had won the ballot in Florida. It is about as subtle as the Apple notebook that Gore uses in the movie. For the uninitiated, the movie includes a Bush-ism. Referring to Gore, a smirking Bush said: “This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our neck in owls and outta work for every American. He is way out, far out, man.”

However, for better or worse, you just need to go watch this one. And not because of Al Gore. Even though he is surprisingly good as a presenter despite putting on a fair bit of weight. In fact, he can absolutely unequivocally qualify as your typical fan-favourite lecturer who is occasionally funny but one who always says the most important things. His delivery was captivating and concise, ably assisted with a thoroughly marvelous multimedia presentation (One of those elevating platforms usually seen in concerts was used. Take that, my dear profs).

Let it be clear that even though Al Gore is at his charming best in this movie, the message he brings here is truly a dire one. It is one thing to read about melting polar caps but another to actually see photo comparisons of receding glaciers; hear about polar bears that drown because they cannot find ice floes in the Artic and understand why some scientists fear that we are nearing another Ice Age.

An Inconvenient Truth is probably the most important film we can watch for our children fifty years on. It is either we do something to save the world we live in now or we can try to colonize Mars.

Movie Rating:



(We have a moral obligation to better comprehend what we are doing to our earth. For more information please go to www.climatecrisis.net. The full-colour illustrated book is selling at $37.75 at Borders.)

Review by: Lim Mun Pong