The film tagline is: Global Warning.  AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH is based on global warming.  Firstly it is to be known that the warming is caused by the release of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases that form a blanket layer trapping the sun heat in the atmosphere.  Director Davis Guggenheim’s (the docs TEACH and THE FIRST YEAR) earnest documentary traces the ex-next President of the United States, Al Gore on his world trotting one-man show on global warming.

Guggenheim plays his film safe.  Al Gore is an excellent lecturer, who has performed the teaching role countless times.  (No doubt, he is making a lot of cash from it – but at least he is doing some good, compared to the current President of the United States).  Just having the camera’s on Gore’s lectures is sufficient.  Gore is funny, enthusiastic and an excellent speaker.  His visual aids that include animation are astounding.  But to hit the truth home, Guggenheim provides comparison of photographs of many famous sites, present and 15 years earlier.  Shots of the Glacier National Park, Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Himalayan Mountains reveal the earth’s largest glaciers melting at an alarming rate.  All this is coupled with scientific theory of how the warming works its way exponentially.

Though not particularly connected with the main topic, Guggenheim digresses his film a little to examine Al Gore’s drive towards this mission.  Gore’s son’s accident, death of his sister to lung cancer and the loss of the Presidency provide a certain ‘humanness’ to the proceedings.
The film tends to be too U.S. based.  For example, in the warning of the climatic catastrophes, the Tsunami was mentioned but more, including footage, was mentioned of recent American disasters like Hurricane Katrina.  However it could be argued that the U.S. probably has the largest role to play.  Guggenheim also stresses that 53% of mass media suggest that global warming is unproved.  Perhaps he could have delved on how this figure came about.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH succeeds and intrigues merely by its subject matter alone.  Though the majority is aware (though perhaps superficially) of the effects of global warming, the film re-enforces the inconvenient truth and what catastrophic results that may occur.  The film is wise to highlight the 10-year time frame that the nations of the world have to get their act together.  And they had better begin soon.  To see the overall temperature rise by 10 degrees by the end of this century is no joke.  Already, most people are feeling the heat of spring, rather than of summer.

Besides nagging the effects of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, Guggenheim ends on a positive note of his faith in man to correct global warming.  Besides providing avenues of what can be done like energy conservation by using alternative power sources and dumping fuel inefficient vehicles like SUVs, he sets an excellent example by ending his film with re-cycled end credits.