Review of The Age of Stupid (2009) by Justin H — 13 Oct 2009

My first clue that things were going to go awry came when the premise of the move was explained on screen, stating that "all footage from the past and present was directly from actual video/news footage." Then the immediately cut to a shot of the Big Bang. From there, the first half of the movie is more about getting out the message that the oil industry, consumerism, airlines, and the industrialized world in general are "bad," than anything else. This is often punctuated by footage of children, the occasional cute, fluffy animal, and accounts of people (again, usually children) suffering and dying as a result of the actions of the evil industrialized world. (Actions which are generally perpetuated by the corrupt governments of the third-world countries in focus, instead of the corporations blamed, but I digress.) It's never a good sign when a "documentary" starts aiming almost entirely for the emotions, while completely ignoring any niggling little things like facts, figures, or in this case: the entire purported reason the film exists in the first place.

After about the 45 minute mark, the movie suddenly remembers it's supposed to be a film about climate change, and finally starts to focus directly on that issue, instead of disconnected stories of tragedy. But it doesn't even manage to do this right. True, "Stupid" does sometimes focus on the mind-numbing idiocy of people standing in the way of renewable energy (specifically: ONE English town's resistance to ONE man's plan to open up ONE wind farm...and that's about it), but for the most part, even this segment seems designed to pull at the heartstrings, than inspire deep thought on the matter. Making things worse is the fact that, like most films of this type, it not only fails to offer up any real solutions to the problem apart from "America should cut its carbon emissions by 90% by the year 2020, and the rest of the industrialized world should follow suit, until eventually there are on carbon emissions at all!" (To be replaced with...what? Wishes and stardust?) And not only that, but again like nearly all other films in this vein, "Stupid" neglects to address the biggest factor to reducing carbon emissions and overall waste: population control. The most it does is expound upon the amount of resources (about five Earth's worth) we'll need to support 9 billion people in 2040, but never once does it stop to ask whether we NEED 9 billion people on the planet by then--or ever!

And the real kicker? Want to know the only time this film actually digs into hard, empirical data? After the credits start rolling. I kid you not. And then, the numbers are so densely packed, and go by so fast, it was a trying task to even read through them before they faded away, let alone digest the information. All in all, "The Age of Stupid" is an unconvincing, poorly-founded "documentary" that shouldn't affect anyone who actually stops to think about it for awhile. A few of the scenes and numbers may open some eyes, but the utter lack of effort at even suggesting any real solutions--even partial ones--leaves this film feeling empty and rather pointless.