“The Age of Stupid” (2009) – Review #33

The premise of “The Age of Stupid” is the following: Sometime in 2055 a custodian (played by Pete Postlethwaite) of a vast human culture library looks back on what went wrong: Why did we humans let Global Warming happen?

Through 6 separate stories we get an international view on the effects of Global Warming and how we humans keep tripping ourselves over whenever a little glimmer of hope was visible.

I think it’s fair to say that this film has a clear objective: create awareness and inspire action (same as many other films). For me it didn’t succeed. It’s very difficult mixing documentary and fiction – I’ve only seen it work a few times (“Touching the Void” being most successful). Starting with something which is clearly fictitious and then moving on to reality creates a certain doubt in the back of the viewer’s mind: Is this fiction? I’d never heard of Jehangir Wadia and kept getting the feeling that he wasn’t for real. One second he has the best intentions for the poor, the next he fires people left and right. The African girl talks about wanting to be a great doctor, then mentions it’s a way for her to be famous. The New Orleans resident talks about how stupid it is to burn oil, then next we see him riding his Harley. This is obviously done consciously and while it is an effective at showing the duality of man, it also left me more depressed than inspired.

On the plus side there are important things to say. The film was crowd-funded, made with passion, has great editing and soundtrack and tries to do something original. Oh, the animation is just amazing.

(view the making of the film)

IMDB: 6.8/10 (1382 votes) / Rotten Tomatoes: 79% (14 reviews) / Wikipedia page / “Official site”:http://www.spannerfilms.net/films/ageofstupid / 92 minutes
Directed by: Franny Armstrong

You may also like:
- “Food = Waste”
- “Collapse”
- “Food, Inc.”