Everything’s Cool

~ Lincoln Spector

Documentary

  • Directed by Daniel Gold and Judith Heifand

The first question Everything’s Cool brings to mind is “Why do we need another documentary about global warming?” The people distributing Everything’s Cool must have aksed that themselves, and came up with an answer: “Because this documentary about global warming is funny.”

But calling Daniel Gold and Judith Heifand’s picture a “toxic comedy” is about as accurate as calling global warming a myth. I think I chuckled once, not because the jokes fell flat but because there are no jokes.

But Everything’s Cool has a purpose, and covers a side of the issue that other docs barely touched on: the struggle to get the American people who understand that it’s real and important. This film examines the misinformation campaign put out by the fossil fuel industry and administration, and profiles a handful of brave souls who fought to get the truth–already recognized by the scientific community–out to the people at large.

It seldom gets above serviceable, however. It’s best scenes involve the Weather Channel’s Dr. Heidi Cullen, a climatologist who must learn how to be a TV personality to get her message across. The other subjects are all admirable people, but their stories seldom get beyond giving you good guys to root for. There are also, of course, plenty of bad guys to jeer.

One good guy is surprisingly almost entirely absent: Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth gets one brief mention in a television newscast. It seems as if Gold and Heifand, in documenting the struggle for public opinion, didn’t want to touch that struggle’s turning point.

Everything’s Cool opens Friday at the Roxie.

Published by Lincoln Spector

Lincoln Spector writes about cinema, technology, and cinema technology. From 1986 through 2008, he wrote Gigglebytes, the first technology-oriented humor column. From 1977 through 2016, he wrote PC World's Answer Line column and blog.