Review of I Am (2011) by John S — 22 Jun 2015

There is so much wrong, idiotic and insulting in this movie one does not know where to begin. In essence it is a pile of steaming hypocritical white people nonsense. The story: White male uses various inventions of industrial and technological capitalism, is wildly successful, goes to hospital and is treated with various helpful devices invented via industrial and technological capitalism, gets better, then uses various devices invented and perfected via capitalism to interview people who have benefited immensely from the wealth created by capitalism to put forth the silliest treatise against capitalism imaginable.

Does this obviously smart middle aged white progressives honestly think Native American tribes did not go to war with each other..often brutally? Or that moving to a mobile home worth 7 figures in Malibu is a sacrifice? What's most insulting about these middle life crisis progressive meltdowns is that they are almost always people who will never really need to toil again hectoring and guilt tripping young people with ambition who do, in fact, want EXACTLY what this guy wanted 25 years before .

He got it, but now that his testosterone levels have dropped he wants everyone to go all beta male and bike from their Malibu homes - ha! - to teach at Pepperdine... you know, that "local university" known the world over for producing one Mother Teresa after another.

.. snark. Also I'm personally sick of people intoning that the world is horrible when, in fact, the world is gorgeous and they themselves are blessed. Finally these blind, whole foods patron rants always end up in one banal place because the logical end of their thesis is too hard to stomach.

In order to achieve the fantasia they want they go to "love is the answer" , which, of course, is nice but is not really the avenue to "saving the planet" ... The fact is what this type of hippie nonsense really needs to achieve it's "let's all live in tee pees and be in a nice community" is a mass die off of humans.

3 billion less of us and we round the corner toward what this filmmaker thinks would be a fine world. Meanwhile I suspect he will continue to live off the fruits of capitalism whether in the film business or off the tuition paid by the rich parents of his students.

Oh those horrible people who create wealth! How dare they allow me to shop at Whole Foods and hang out along the gorgeous California coast!