An Inconvenient Truth

last updated 8 January 2015

A full-length documentary that follows Al Gore through lectures on environmental policy? Sounds like the most soporific movie premise of all time, said Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. But once this guy gets going on the polar ice caps, the film 'œgrabs you like a thriller.' While the evidence of global warming is spine-chilling, what's truly astounding is how the former veep has turned from a dud to an audience-rouser in six years. So much so, that you can't help wondering whether Gore the documentary subject will soon become Gore the 2008 presidential candidate, said Jan Stuart in Newsday. He's got 'œa folksy, Nashville-groomed conviviality,' and such obvious passion that no one could help but be moved by his talks. Gore is doing here what he could never do during the 2000 campaign: He successfully integrates his personal and public stories. By relating his sister's death from lung cancer and the family's subsequent decision to get rid of their tobacco farms, he is able to insist that care for our environment is a moral question, not a political one. Yet even those who think global warming is a problem may find it 'œawkward to admit' that the film is a snooze, said David Usborne in the London Independent. Gore does everything right—the jokes, the earnestness, the self-deprecation. 'œBut his ultra-worthiness could smother a forest fire.'

Rating: PG