The Details

Cool It

Directed by Ondi Timoner

Rated PG

Beyond the Weekly

Cool It

IMDb: Cool It

Rotten Tomatoes: Cool It

Positioned as an alternative to the fearmongering and propaganda of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Ondi Timoner’s lively documentary Cool It, about Danish global-warming skeptic Bjorn Lomborg, is really no less alarmist and biased than Gore’s influential lecture. It’s just alarmist and biased in a different way, positing that current efforts to combat global warming (which Lomborg believes is real but grossly exaggerated) are misguided and ineffective, and that the world’s problems will be solved only if we adopt Lomborg’s suggestions instead of Gore’s (or those of various other politicians and activists). Timoner portrays Lomborg as a misunderstood genius fighting against the system, with plenty of friendly interview subjects to support Lomborg’s self-aggrandizing. That’s not to say that Cool It doesn’t present some valuable ideas, or that it isn’t a worthwhile counterpoint to various doomsaying social-issue documentaries. But it’s merely fighting propaganda with more propaganda.