Renee Rosenow

When the 2007 film “The 11th Hour” begins it’s immediately hard to avoid comparing it to the 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Both films are about the environment and both have substantial leading men highlighting their films. Al Gore proved to be an amazingly charismatic on screen talent in “An Inconvenient Truth,” and this coming from someone who hated the man during the 2000 presidential election. With “The 11th Hour,” the on screen charisma of its main attraction has already been established to the viewer prior to its viewing. Leonardo DiCaprio, presently one of Hollywood’s best actors, narrates and actually produces the film. But at the viewers expense, he never uses his fame to bring to light the cause of the film much like Gore did with “An Inconvenient Truth.”

DiCaprio essentially commands about one third of the film’s content, whereas Gore was nearly in everything his respective film showed. Gore’s occupation of screen time gave the audience a sense of intimacy with him. It created a sense that he was talking to you and not doing his best to preach to you. He was funny, made valid points with valid research and separated himself from his political image in order to get a point across.

When DiCaprio isn’t on screen, the rest of the film is devoted to so-called experts explaining their take on various environmental issues. With their vast array of complex vocabulary and at times incomprehensible dialects, these people, proficient in their fields of study do their best to make the audience understand how their environment is suffering while never gaining their trust or attention. While Gore had charisma, these individuals come across as angry and preachy; not a good combination when putting together a documentary that is attempting to pursuade people to act.

And as numerous as their vocabulary is, so goes the wide array of points those individuals in the film make. The overall message of the film, although easily seen as doing our best to go green, is made much more complicated than it needs be. So many opinions and solutions are offered up that it becomes hard to focus on a select few and act upon them. The film is overwhelming in pointing out so many problems and then offering so many solutions that it’s hard to soak it all in and actually act upon what the film says.

“An Inconvenient Truth” had the ability to make watching a documentary about going green fun and interesting. Once it was over it was hard to forget and easy to act upon the various things it proposed its audience to do to make a difference. To an extent, “The 11th Hour” suffers from coming after “An Inconvenient Truth.” But even a film that followed “An Inconvenient Truth” could have done a better job of presenting global problems in a new way, once again making the audience feel like they were part of a greater picture. The film is not engaging, not enjoyable and for the most part forgettable. It leaves the audience feeling small, more a pest than a solution, and ultimately creates a classroom documentary out of something that had a lot going for it.

– Scott Hansen