'Inconvenient Sequel' not as hot as Oscar-winning original doc
Maybe it's just me, but could there be just a slight bit of nah-nah-nah-boo-boo-told-you-so attitude riffing off Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”?
Gore's original save-the-planet documentary deservedly won the Oscar in 2006. Our former U.S. vice president took what could have been a dull, academic lecture and - with engaging charts and documentary disaster footage - scared the bejeebers out of us with his science-stuffed warning of ecological Armageddon if we don't do something now about greenhouse grasses.
Co-directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk (directors of another ecology documentary “The Island President”), “Sequel” delivers an update on where we stand in world health, and it ain't good.
Remember those critics of “Inconvenient Truth” who pooh-poohed Gore's dour prediction that the waters would rise enough to flood Manhattan?
Here's the footage 10 years later showing the flooded site where the World Trade Center stood. Boom-chakalaka!
When was the Earth's hottest year ever? We just had it. Boom-chakalaka the sequel!
“Inconvenient Sequel” is highly informative about the United Nation's historic 2015 Climate Change Conference, plus all the behind-the-scenes horse-trading deals that Gore performed to persuade India not to build hundreds of coal-powered plants.
But this doc doesn't possess the power and sway of its urgent, articulate and motivational 2006 original doc.
Perhaps to give this report some personality, Cohen and Shenk train their cameras on Gore himself, profiling the man who would be the green prophet at his home where he shows us family photos and pictures of the famous people he has met.
The doc pushes more pressing buttons later when it shows clips of President Trump announcing his intention to undo all the green nonsense reportedly inspired by a Chinese conspiracy.
This part of “Sequel” feels just a bit like a pulled punch, especially after Gore meets with Trump to discuss climate change, with anticlimactic results. (Gore didn't want to talk much about it.)
But hold on for the best part: Gore cuts loose with an impassioned speech to save our planet, taking his usually measured delivery to TV evangelist levels.
“Couldn't you hear what the scientists were saying?” he thunders to a crowd. “Couldn't you hear what Mother Nature was screaming at you?” Then, “This movement is in the tradition of every great movement that has advanced humankind!”
I wondered if this crusading Al Gore had been around in 2000, could he have created a cooler political climate in America?
“An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”
★ ★ ½
A documentary with: Al Gore
Directed by: Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen
Other: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated PG. 99 minutes