The Age of Stupid (2009)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I didn't mind the sci-fi aspect of this documentary: Our narrator is a guy in a futuristic archive in the 2050's wondering how humanity got to this point. And then we see news clips and interviews from our time with people talking about big oil companies, natural disasters, observable climate change results, harsh living conditions and, ironically, a guy who wants to make flying in India dead cheap. The movie overall felt a bit unfocused, for example talking at one point about wars being fought over oil and then making a narrative jump to Iraqi kids talking about their wish to kill Americans to revenge their dad. Things like that gave the movie a weird political aspect that felt unnecessary - to my taste as a Central European anyway. But obviously this was made mostly for American audiences, where human- induced climate change is always a political issue as well.So, summing up: I support the cause of raising awareness for climate change and its potential consequences and it's good to show people how they can change their habits and have an impact. I liked the animation bits for that. But apart from that this movie will not deliver many new facts or aspects. And worst of all: A climate change denier will walk away from this movie probably with an unchanged opinion, because there are a lot of mixed messages. So, maybe we live in the age of stupid after all.

I have deeply studied the climate science, and have been presenting this information publicly. I had no idea there was a movie already made about this...the new time lines of the climate crisis are precisely conveyed by this movie. In a way that is *accessible*. And that is even entertaining. This is humanity's very last chance to redeem himself to the planet/nature/god (call it what you will). As a species, we are flunking out. Of course, there are plenty of comments below about the preposterousness of climate science. These commenters have been hornswoggled by the propaganda of the right wing of American politics, and their funding fathers, the fossil fuel corporations. These commenters know not what they spew.

The subject of climate change is often covered but rarely brought to the big screen. This ambitious low budget project is well worth viewing because it will make you think just that little more about how we're draining resources on earth.It's a neat idea. The late and much missed Pete Postlethwaite is an archivist who spends the entire film touching a computer screen showing us reasons why the planet ended up in such a desolate state in 2055.Interlaced with six separate documentary stories covering various aspects of climate change are snippets of news recordings, social commentary and animation hybrid. It all works rather well, your interest is kept high and the stories all work the grey matter into overdrive. All held together by Postlethwaite who in reality has very little to do but does it rather well nonetheless. Most certainly worth a watch and just may well tempt you to try reduce your carbon emission. A good effort all round.

This is a good documentary. As agitprop, it's raised to the level of a must-see by the sharp manner in which honest, location documentary footage is intercut with a meticulously built up store of pertinent images and some really rather good animation (I had already seen a making-of video concerning the animation and it's actually better than I was expecting).Clearly, the 'gold'-standard for a polemic documentary such as this is the work of Michael Moore. For me this film is a cut above his oeuvre as there is a greater internal consistency about it. The voice-over is better tempered, a news- like patter delivered by a clearly on-board Pete Postlethwaite (although I didn't like Fanny Armstong's contrivance-curdled script with which he was saddled). Still, with the film rolling out at its own pace, the stories accrue credibility and one can see the clear difference between a blinkered oligarch-assumptive (Jeh Wadia) and the likes of Layefa Malini, a class apart in her poverty but a cut above in her optimism and positive humanity. 6/10