2006 brought Al Gore's brilliant and scary documentary, An Inconvenient Truth blasting into cinemas and soon after, classrooms. With its raw exposure to a dangerous and (until then) quiet killer, Gore's position in the world went from being the biggest contested loser in American politics (until Hillary Clinton in 2016) to being a warrior for the earth. It was an amazing documentary and ranks in my top ten of all time. However, when I saw this sequel...things changed. My thoughts on climate change are cemented, it is real and anyone who argues that it's not is ill informed or just can't face facts. But one thing that is as much of a fact as climate change is how terrible a documentary and sequel this film is.
Rehashing points made in 2006 and coupling it with some pretty far fetched predictions for the future make this film more frustrating than informative. What Gore did in 2006 was he made an accessible documentary about a crisis and used it to try to create a better and more informed world. Here, Gore seems infatuated with himself and some of the film ends up feeling more about him than climate change. Ten years since his first attempt, one could feel that he could have come to the table with something more substantial than the same graphs spun differently and the same dialog written with a bit more finesse.
Overall, I feel the message is still here. Climate change is a big problem that the world faces every day and it is up to us to stop it. But it is up to Al Gore to make sure that when he wants to do a documentary, that his info can sustain a feature length film. Instead of a little bit of new information and showing how much damage we've done in 10 years, the documentary should have been much better. I wanted more interviews with people affected by the changes, I wanted more interviews with politicians on both sides. To be honest, there's more I wanted out of this film than was delivered. That, to me, represents a disappointing film. Which is so hard for me to take considering An Inconvenient Truth is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. It is up there with Super Size Me, The Thin Blue Line, and My Brother's Keeper for me. To see this and feel as cheated as I do, it is any wonder why I don't give this a 1 on my sheer disappointment alone. But, I have to give the film credit for at least being entertaining and informative, even if much of the information is already 10 years old.
Rehashing points made in 2006 and coupling it with some pretty far fetched predictions for the future make this film more frustrating than informative. What Gore did in 2006 was he made an accessible documentary about a crisis and used it to try to create a better and more informed world. Here, Gore seems infatuated with himself and some of the film ends up feeling more about him than climate change. Ten years since his first attempt, one could feel that he could have come to the table with something more substantial than the same graphs spun differently and the same dialog written with a bit more finesse.
Overall, I feel the message is still here. Climate change is a big problem that the world faces every day and it is up to us to stop it. But it is up to Al Gore to make sure that when he wants to do a documentary, that his info can sustain a feature length film. Instead of a little bit of new information and showing how much damage we've done in 10 years, the documentary should have been much better. I wanted more interviews with people affected by the changes, I wanted more interviews with politicians on both sides. To be honest, there's more I wanted out of this film than was delivered. That, to me, represents a disappointing film. Which is so hard for me to take considering An Inconvenient Truth is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. It is up there with Super Size Me, The Thin Blue Line, and My Brother's Keeper for me. To see this and feel as cheated as I do, it is any wonder why I don't give this a 1 on my sheer disappointment alone. But, I have to give the film credit for at least being entertaining and informative, even if much of the information is already 10 years old.