Sometimes movies are made without the primary goal of entertaining an audience, but few succeed as engaging and compelling films. I’m happy to report An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Al Gore’s second nature documentary, is one of these rare winners.
This is a direct, modern sequel to Gore’s 2006 hit An Inconvenient Truth, which was a mainly a filmed recording of his famous academic presentation about the effects of climate change. (The similar first film was a true smash - it’s one of the highest grossing documentaries ever and won two Academy Awards.)
For the sequel, Gore permitted documentary crews to follow his speaking engagements and civic work leading up to the revolutionary 2015 Paris conference. It’s less of a direct presentation on a stage and more directly showing Gore’s work in practice.
If you’re still craving creative presentations and passionate public speaking, there’s still a taste of that too. But it’s more effective and contemporary for the scenes to show how brutally hard the business of positive environmentalism can be.
There is a glaring and obvious political view the movie is expressing. Donald Trump is hinted as the fairy tale antagonist right from the beginning, but thankfully never appears beyond a short clip or ominously heard the quote.
The focus from the start is the dynamic environmentalism, and 90% is focused on the positive change and work people are making to improve Earth’s sustainability. It’s more than optimistic and informative - it’s truly stirring without being overly emotional.
Whether you believe in climate change or not, the film makes an aggressively compelling argument for positive social change on a global scale. Gore describes so many productive and useful things regular moviegoers can tangibly do that would benefit our natural environment.
If you’re not sure whether it’s worth going to see in the theatres, remember this: important, necessary filmmaking like An Inconvenient Sequel only gets made if audiences are willing to go to the cinema and pay to watch it.
That alone is reasoning enough for me to recommend you spend some time this weekend going to see Mr. Gore on the big screen. It’s also appropriate for families and young children - so much so that it’s a reasonable length and easy enough to understand. (Though anyone under Kindergarten age may be somewhat bored by the end.)
Don’t let some excitedly negative reviews detract you from seeing Truth to Power. Notice, for instance, many of the 1/10 IMDB reviews for the film are reviewers also citing global warming as an unfunny hoax.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
3 1/2 out of 4 stars
G, 100 minutes. Documentary.
Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk.
Starring Al Gore and Donald Trump.
Now Playing at Cineplex Winston Churchill.
