An Inconvenient Truth vs Finding Nemo

A lot of you are wondering, so I’ll just get to it: yes, watching An Inconvenient Truth is sort of like watching the weather. But it’s like watching the weather being delivered by someone who knows a lot about the weather. As in, everything about the weather. And instead of standing in front of a green-screen map, he’s got the world’s biggest PowerPoint presentation, and one of those human cherry-picker forklifts for when the graphs get so big he can’t reach the top anymore.

People have already taken political sides about An Inconvenient Truth, because it stars Al Gore. We’re all well aware that he stands on a specific political side, but does that mean that every bit of information he might have for us is politically slanted? Must he always represent just one side of a debate? Can’t he be right sometimes? Because you know, that’s what debate used to be: somebody won. Regardless of your political leanings, when you see that the ice caps are melting, creating more water around them, which absorbs sunlight instead of reflecting it and heats up, causing storms to become hotter, faster and bigger, it’ll likely matter a lot less to you how Gore might vote on Social Security or prayer in schools. Whatever. Fight it out amongst yourselves. To me, it’s a movie before it’s anything else, and An Inconvenient Truth is a pretty good movie.

It’s more entertaining than the weather, primarily because Gore is a vastly underrated public speaker (the movie is essentially just a documentary of a speech he’s given hundreds of times, so he’s had practice), and because it contains moments from his life that tie the issue of global warming to a person, rather than a series of maps and graphs (although it’s got those too, in abundance. After a while, they’ll all sort of look the same, but that’s the point. If only a few graphs were alarmingly climbing the same hill, there’d be no reason for the movie at all.)

This will be one of the shorter reviews on here. To describe the movie further, I’d have to repeat statistics and percentages, and provide links to flowcharts and post-melt simulated photos, and I don’t think anybody wants that. Regardless of your political affiliation, you can’t deny that there have been some insanely big storms the past few years, and there might be a theory hidden deep within An Inconvenient Truth that makes you think, for just a second, about turning off a light when you leave the room.

If An Inconvenient Truth doesn’t move you to recycle, or use less fuel, or waste less water, will Nemo? Sweet little lost Nemo? Will you do it for him? Look how happy he is, swimming around in the clean, clear water, near the colorful, protective shield of the corral reefs with dozens upon dozens of species of fish, amphibian and swimming mammal. Isn’t he sweet?

Finding Nemo is my least favorite of the Pixar films so far, which means it’s merely excellent as opposed to incredible. Nemo is more sentimental than the others, and there are more lessons offered. It’s a little like getting a speech on the environment from Al Gore, if you want the truth. But like that speech, there’s something for us to learn, and it’s this: voice talent must be as appropriately cast as live action actors. Just because someone is famous doesn’t mean they’ll make a good voice for animation. Do I need to bring up Shark Tale? Ellen Degeneres and Albert Brooks would never have been cast in, say, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but they’re perfect for their roles in Finding Nemo, despite not being quite so above-the-title friendly as I’m sure certain studio heads would have preferred. Finding Nemo is also one of the most exquisitely animated movies ever, with the ocean providing the ultimate atmosphere for the artists at Pixar to perform their magic. The great thing about Pixar movies is that they don’t duplicate real life exactly. No one will say that the fish in Finding Nemo look exactly like actual fish. But the water looks like actual water, and the sky looks like the actual sky, and darn it if those animated fish don’t look like real something. Maybe they’re something real that we just haven’t seen yet? Here’s hoping that water stays cool enough for them.

An Inconvenient Truth: B+
Finding Nemo: B+