Everything’s Cool | DVD Review

Sundance selection documentary, “Everything’s Cool” (Daniel B. Gold, Judith Helfand) has good intentions in its attempt to convey the gap between global warming believers and skeptics. However, the film loses objectivity immediately and we’re shown the good guys, such as writer/activist Ross Gelben in the good, sadly often fruitless plight against the corporate, and republican government-backed, truth-smearing skeptics.

Mostly “Everything’s Cool” is preaching to the converted, and, after Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” there’s not much to learn here that hasn’t already been covered. Instead, we are subjected to visually cheap tricks, such as numerous shots of melting snow and snow-less ski slopes. It is billed as a “Toxic comedy about global warming”; but it’s hard to find anything funny here, save for a few ignorant random Americans who pathetically aren’t able to link images of drought to the phrase G_ _B_L _ _ R_ _ NG on the side of a van. Instead, and though maybe rightfully so, we’re told repeatedly that we have ten years left to do something before our planet begins its irreversible decline towards becoming uninhabitable.

The film manages to captivate when it focuses on a handful of interesting individuals, such as “the bad boys of environmentalism” Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, who published a controversial paper entitled, “The Death of Environmentalism” and Ross Gelben, who has spent the better part of the last two decades amassing information proving and backing global warming theories and has written two highly regarded books on the subject. The affable man is tired and disillusioned and sees now that a grim outcome is unavoidable; but somehow continues to push forward in hopes he can at least lessen the damage by degrees.

It seems now the only thing left to do is point fingers towards the ones who erased and altered facts; while we feed our automobiles vegetable oil and recycle, waiting for the apocalypse, hoping it won’t burn too bad.

For those interested in the environmental movement this DVD is sufficiently packed with extras; including over 1 hour of bonus footage from the film, and demonstration footage, as well as a DVD-ROM link to a doctored congressional report and the Rick Plitz Testimony.

A director’s commentary is included–not really worth a listen, as it involves the directors reiterating what’s happening on screen with no particular insight.

Note:Also, taking the same cue as the Al Gore documentary, this comes in an environmentally-friendly cardboard packaging.

Nothing new here, after “An Inconvenient Truth” covered the hard facts. Unlike is predecessor, “Everything’s Cool” is more entertaining and worth watching if only for its portraits of tired and battered champions of the environment who refuse to give up in the face of skepticism and apathy.

Movie rating – 2

Disc Rating – 3.5