.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

It will come as a surprise that in a year that has already brought us such horror films as The Omen, Silent Hill and The Hills Have Eyes, that the scariest film of 2006 is one narrated by the man who was formally the next President of the United States.

To what I am referring is An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary starring Al Gore which details the effects of global warming on the planet we all like to call home.

The film is textbook presentation. Al stands in front of large screens and scares the bejesus out of us by showing how CO2 levels have risen in the past century, how polar ice caps are mysteriously disappearing and our constant use of fossil fuels have affected the weather patterns (and not in a good way).

Like sitting back in high school with a bag of popcorn in our laps instead of love notes to be passed forward, the film throws statistics and graphs at us quicker than a speed freak trying to explain to the police that he isn't high. We learn in horror on the same screen that Wolverine snitted his claws the week before that ten of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past fourteen years, and that at this continued rate of climatic change the costal cities around the world would suffer catastrophic flooding resulting in the potential death of hundreds of millions of people.

An Inconvenient Truth has it all. It has the details, the science and the visuals to back up its claim. Seeing pictures of various glacier regions and mountain tops from yesteryear and again in 2005 will prove without a shadow of a doubt that the world is changing and that that we being both the disease and the cure need to change our thinking in order to avert disaster.

This all makes An Inconvenient Truth an important film to see (although waiting for the DVD release would not be such a bad option). Al Gore as its host, narrator and sole voice of reason brings just the right amount of intelligence, charisma and humor (yes, you read that correctly) to keep us informed and entertained through the film's end credits. If you can get past the fact that he star lost his shot at the White House due to a state that could be underwater in 10 years and that he continually uses the phrase "…a good friend of mine…" like someone at a party you want to skewer with the toothpick keeping your martini olive afloat.

But just as Gore is the right man for the film's complex roll out of facts and heavy presentation, the segments containing his retelling of his upbringing and personal experiences and tragedies are the film's one big drawback. No offence to the man that might have one day had his finger on the button, but seeing pictures of him as a youngling retelling stories of how he used to work on a tobacco farm, strayed from the overall message and felt more like a campaign for re-election rather than progressing the narrative towards a work-for-the-future conclusion.

But that is just a small snake in a movie with plenty of ladders. An Inconvenient Truth will be a frontrunner for Best Documentary once the Oscar nominations are announced for 2006. But, more importantly, the movie will become a staple for education departments around the world. And that is the convenient truth.