An Inconvenient Truth Reviews

This film highlighted some life-changing important facts about the climate crisis during the time of its release & is slightly better than its sequel, but unfortunately when it comes to the overall, the film does not highlight the most significant contributor to the climate crisis such as the USA military and corporatism. Imperialism and capitalism is the reason why we are in this mess. Instead, we have Al Gore at the front cover completely ignorant on highlighting the most important thing to end the climate crisis. Gore is just as ignorant in the sequel.

by Dane Youssef


Pumping smoke stacks, puking exhaust pipes, fires burning, ice melting, deserts spreading... and most of the world turning a blind eye... until it hits them. Deserts are spreading. Icebergs are melting, shrinking. New diseases are developing. Old diseases are flourishing. Temperatures are sky-rocketing. Homes are being destroyed. Animal species are going extinct. People are actually dying...


The sky is a-blazing. It looks like desert heat all around. The ice age seems to be long over and now we're in a heat wave that shows no signs of ending. In fact, it all shows signs of worsening. At this rate, the future will resemble something like "Waterworld" or "I Am Legend."


He's flat-out told us again and again, "This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue."


AL GORE WAS THE MAN whom every democrat, every liberal-anyone with any common sense and taste was rooting to take first Presidential chair in 2001. The man received the Nobel Prize for World Peace. He received Vice-Presidency twice.


"INCONVENIENT TRUTH" has been a world-tour lecture, a book... and now a movie. And since then, probably a helluva lot more. Gore campaigns for saving the planet harder than he did for any political office. This is definitely a movie that needs to be seen-without question. And more than once to be totally understood. Memorized. Every last detail.


Now Moore's films are really editorials more than anything else. The Big Man delivers his opinion, his synopsis, his beliefs more than anything else.


Gore's movie is also one-sided, but more than the traditional documentary or even docudrama, "INCONVENIENT TRUTH" is more of an inflated Multimedia Key Note presentation filmed live in concert by the former would-be President of the United States. But there is plenty of doc-footage incorporated that's wrapped around Gore's lecture. He shows us the progressive thawing that has occurred in places like Patagonia and Mt. Kilimanjaro. How massive heat waves have been taken place that feel like summer in Death Valley all-year around.


There are certain movies that should not be copyrighted at all, but rather in the public domain. Michael Moore allowed "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be put online and downloaded for free because he believed every person on the planet needed to see his message.


While it's billed as a documentary (or "docu-drama"), about 90% of "AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH" is flat-out PowerPoint lecture in the form of slides, rather than an actual documentary. Michael Moore has become to the documentary what... well, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln were to politics. And what Gore has always wished he could be. My mother said she's loved ever since the days when he was Clinton's right-hand man. She voted for him when he went after the presidency and was heartbroken when he was denied his rightful seat in office.


"INCONVENIENT TRUTH" is occasionally a documentary. Director Davis Guggenheim incorporates some footage of the personal trials in the man's life. His family that were tobacco farmers and how this cost him his only sister. The evil of the Red State Party. His son's near-death experience. And of course, the fact that the official seat of power was almost criminally denied to him in the year of our Lord, 2001.


There are even slides. Gore calls his presentation "a slide show." Now that doesn't seem like a high selling point. Power-point. Slide show. Environment. Not exactly something that describes the summer blockbuster, is it? And yet, this is not only one to see--it's a must-see. An absolute
must-see. Like the latest breaking news exclusive... it's necessary for the sake of your life, the lives of your loved ones, everyone else... the whole wide world itself.


Remember that awful summer blockbuster "Waterworld"? It was so bad, God Forbid that piece of over-budgeted tripe come true.


That one was all wet, but that was an absolute possibility? Hell, it could be even worse. None of the humans may make it at all. Not even Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper.


But "INCONVENIENT TRUTH" doesn't just keep on the impending global end as the movie interrupts to shine on the former vice-president's personal life: his loss of the presidency, his son's near-death experience, his childhood home and the memories he made there.


Gore's daughter Kristen, writes for the science-fiction cartoon "Futurama" and Gore even uses a clip from an episode on global warming to illustrate his power-point all the further. Hell, it practically defines the term "Power-Point." No, it's not as enthralling as a Moore pic. But it's certainly more interesting and informative that the standard boilerplate college geography/science class. And Gore shows us as always, America is "by far, the biggest contributor to the problem." Speaking personally as an American, why is that always the case?
And those docudrama scenes are sprinkled with just a hint of the right dramatic music. 99% of the movie, which is the photographed multimedia lecture has no music on the soundtrack--probably so we can focus on Gore, his Power Points ... and we, the people can draw our own conclusions from the facts he give us.


When Gore talks of his childhood spent on the tobacco farm, he gives me a line that filled me with jealousy: "As a kid, it took me a long time to figure out the difference between play and work." Yeah, rub it in, Al. Rub it in.


After this, one feels he should be elected God. Of everything. Well, at least our personal hero. I laughed when I read this professional review from Mick La Sale of the San Francisco Chronicle remarking, "The camera has never loved Gore, but something is going on in "An Inconvenient Truth," and that's the other big story here. Gore has come back on the scene heavier, older and a lot more likable, physically transformed in a way as to allow people to see him as if for the first time. After years of looking like Clark Kent without the glasses, Gore looks like a heavyset mensch. Moreover, the change seems to be more than surface."


It's not that the camera really hates Gore. It's that the microphone doesn't really love him. The man has no energy. He always seems to be sedated, under the influence of an overdose heavy Valium. Albert Gore does not have an enthralling show presence. On stage, he tends to come off rather fuddy-duddyish. Dull. He never really electrifies. Gore is a bore. Usually.
Usually...


Now a handful of folk have hated this film. We're not meant to please everybody, are we? I'm the kind of person who believes if you are pleasing everybody, you're doing something wrong. Gore comes across as a Harvard college professor giving a lecture-but maybe that's all this movie needs to be. And in the end, "INCONVENIENT TRUTH" made me assured that I made the right choice voting for him twice. Even though somehow we all knew Lucifer and Rosemary's Demon Seed was going to win. After this movie... I think just about anybody would put this man in office. If not in the White House, then maybe the head of Greenpeace.


George W. still resents Gore for daring to threaten his attempt at the Presidency-following in his father's footsteps. And so do all of we. It's worse than mere melting of the polar ice caps. Yes, there have been floods-a lot of them. But excuse me for saying so, that is just the tip of the iceberg. We hear about how people in hotter climates of the world (Africa, Egypt, India, etc.) are dying of heat exposure. We see there is drought as well as flood.


Gore, director Guggenheim and co. could have literally just layed a lot of music on the soundtrack to force the "right opinion" on us. But damn them, they let us have our own opinion. There could have been a lot more newsreel footage with a lot of pop music on the score-as well as a lot of biased commentary telling us "what is" like the thrilling, infamous (but often perjurious) docudramas of Michael Moore. But Gore and his crew try to let the statistics speak for themselves. Gore has never come across as enthralling or charismatic... at least now until now... somehow.


But Gore is not the only politician in this movie. We hear from the other-side, the red-state, right-wing "bad guys" who attempt to silence the plea to stop "the end of the world as we know it"-that's right, largely Republicans and Capitalists who know that the companies causing the Greenhouse Effect and the End of the World are also causing wealth, power and employment. And want more than anything else-ANYTHING NOT to cause a panic among the American people.


Well, Gore wins our love as much as he did when-no, MORE than he did when he ran for the Presidency solo. Now we love him. And Gore makes the star of this movie--the worsening environmental crisis-not himself. Though a politician first, he does make some personal plugs. He manages to shoehorn in a lot of his personal life into the picture numerous times-like a bumper in-between commercial breaks. Perhaps this a must-we should have some affection for the messenger.


Now normally when I review a film, I try to not to give away the ending. But in this particular case, the ending is still being written. By us. If only he really had taken home the Oscar. Contrary to popular belief, he really just showed to up to take it home to director Davis Guggenheim. Too bad. Losing the US presidency and taking home the US Academy Award six years later would have the perfect poetic justice.


As as for "Waterworld" realized-- come on, this is all inevitable- and it all seems to be COMING SOON. The "End of Days.*" Maybe in the end, all we can do is postpone it.


--As Always, Dane Youssef


*Hell, that would have been a great title for this movie if it wasn't snapped up by that crummy Schwarzenegger flick.

Since I kept hearing good things about this flick, I thought I should eventually check it out. Honestly, I didn't think I would learn much about the subject. I mean, come on, I have been hearing about Global Warning since I was 12 so I wasn't expecting much. Still, I was actually surprised and, somehow, I thought it was a very efficient documentary. Indeed, there was actually nothing really new about what the ideas and theories they developed in this movie but it was still a good reminder about the current status of our Planet Earth (which is, as you probably already know, pretty bad...). The funny thing is that most of us while watching this flick must have been kind of horrified about the figures and the facts displayed but how many of us truly modified their lifestyle afterwards to make things better? I'm pretty sure almost nobody did anything differently (I sure did not) but it is how it goes, we like to think that we are aware about everything going on around us but we still keep on making the same mistakes. I guess it has something to do with the human nature or maybe we are simply just plain stupid. Anyway, to conclude, I thought it was a very well made and interesting documentary and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

''You see that pale, blue dot? That's us. Everything that has ever happened in all of human history, has happened on that pixel. All the triumphs and all the tragedies, all the wars all the famines, all the major advances... it's our only home. And that is what is at stake, our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization. I believe this is a moral issue, it is your time to cease this issue, it is our time to rise again to secure our future.''


A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.

Al Gore: Himself

My first thoughts after watching Truth is that more films like this need to be made in this style.
That show we have to change our ways because quite frankly the world we live in doesn't deserve negligence from the worst thing this planet has going for it: Us...

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is informative, detailed and something like a lesson you would have at Uni College or even School that doesn't deserve to fall on deaf ears.

It's message is simple, we as a people need to wake up no matter what Country we are in and make a difference in the way we think about Global Warming and conjure and muster up a way of doing something to make it better.

It has humour, it has beautiful, realized charts, facts and features to get it's point across. Al Gore is a charismatic powerful figure who's doing the right thing, not just for himself but for everyone.

End of the day we cant keep ignoring these issues and hoping someone else will fix them in future generations to come but to do something now, make things better at this moment and grasp it. Of course it's going to be a gradual thing but this is something that overshadows even terrorism.

One day the Earth won't be there, so let's stand by Al Gore and make sure our Planet stays about for longer. Not just for ourselves but for our children and our children's children...

A heart felt film that shows not a boring documentary but a masterpiece with a message that hits home.

An Inconvenient Truth is really weird. It’s not a drama or even a documentary in the traditional sense, it's more of a slide show, delivered to a live audience, on the subject of the environment. To make this work you should need a great presenter, so who was chosen to tackle this huge task, Bono from U2? David Attenborough? Nope, it’s Al Gore the former American Vice President – well we all trust what politicians tell us! Don’t we?

What follows is a very moving account of why we should firstly trust Al Gore, why his family were willing to change their opinion of pushing tobacco on the public when it hit close to home and then Al Gore gives us key figures, charts and even diagrams on how CO2 (Carbon dioxide) is really the biggest threat against humanity and the World today. All details are presented as facts, not theories, with no counter argument.

For example, Al Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. However the September 2006 Issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

What is also never discussed is that the rise in carbon dioxide levels actually lags behind temperature rise by quite a few years. So carbon dioxide rises aren’t the cause of global warming, but the outcome of rises! This movie in effect puts it that ‘the cart pushes the horse along’, despite this lunacy, everyone agrees, the movie is a success and the world changes.

Joe Public is now working harder for the environment and trying to recycle more, which isn’t a bad thing. There are however many negative sides of this movies global success, such as the renewed push towards nuclear power, carbon trading (which is nonsense), third-world countries are no longer able to use their vast natural resources and enjoy their own industrial revolutions, and scientists who attempt to obtain grants for research that may contradict the man-made explanation are shunned by the political establishment and often vilified.

Do watch this movie to see what its all about, it will hopefully move you to become more aware of your environment, but please do also use your own grey matter to think about the real causes and effects around us. Oh and don’t always trust what a politician tells you!

I would have given this film a higher rating, but to be honest with you, it frightened me quite a bit with all of that end of the world talk, and why it is bad to use electronics and so forth, but I actually learned a valuable lesson from this film, and it taught me something. I learned that global warming actually is eventually going to happen, and it is not worth pretending that it won't. This film did a good job at putting those facts together, into one huge presentation to show the world. I enjoyed this film a lot.

Only Al Gore could be so passionate and so low-key at the same time. This documentary is basically a wooden old guy doing a slide show with graphs and pie charts about things you don't want to know. But, with Al's comforting voice, willingness to be the butt of his own jokes, vivid scenes of places in peril and intimate views of Al's past and present, it becomes a whole lot more than a slide show.

this is a very well done presentation, that for about 5 minutes lets you think: "sell your car, stop heating your living room and get back to nature".

Everyone who is still not convinced that global warming is real and humans are causing it, should see this movie. It shows you pictures and data that can not be overlooked!