I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

On the surface, Franny Armstrong's 'The Age of Stupid' may seem like just another 'save the planet' type documentary that follows Al Gore's now overrated 'An Inconvenient Truth' but it does make some relevant points particularly on how this effects the developing countries and the common citizen of developed countries (in this day of consumerism when too much is changing too fast). Armstrong takes a look at how some cultures are affected using individual examples. For example, there's the aspiring doctor Layefa Malemi who lives in a poverty stricken region where even clean water is a scarcity and then there's the businessman Jeh Wadia who's working hard to launch his airline company to provide the 'ordinary citizen' with the option to commute through flight. I wonder how affordable the price is made for the ordinary working population. In addition, through an Iraqi family Armstrong also looks at how war, in addition to causing human loss can cause severe environmental damage that may lead to chronic difficulties. At the same time the writer also attempts to show us the other perspective as is the case of Indian businessman Jeh Wadia who appears to start a new airline company to facilitate travelling for the working class citizen (even though the point is made that planes cause severe pollution). On the technical front, it's well shot and edited. The special effects are quite decent and with the legendary Pete Posthlewaite little can go wrong.

This film had some clever portrayals of critical concepts, especially in the animated segments. It initially did a good job of paring down the major issues. The story about the Mont Blanc guide who laments vanishing glaciers was the high point for me. There was dramatic footage of how much a glacier had receded in his lifetime.But the "personal stories" sent mixed messages, seemingly intentionally. They could have used a clearer moral angle. You couldn't tell if the characters were hypocrites or do-gooders. Maybe that was the whole point.Whatever the full intent was, it got lost on me when NIMBY attitudes toward 400-foot wind turbines were portrayed as ANTI-environmental, solely for the climate change aspect. The man pushing turbines had a righteous indignation that was one-sided in this coverage. Was he upset for lack of "greenness" or loss of personal profit? He was living on a farm, but seemed to have forgotten the value of nature itself vs. coddling human needs.Wind power development is often about short term gains for the developers. The outfits who build them are like oil wildcatters; not exactly people who respect nature. The locals end up stuck in an industrial zone when they had hoped for peace & quiet with unfettered sunsets and no shadow flicker or red flashing lights all night. Bird kills still happen with the large turbines, since their blade tips are fast-moving.The film singled out a scenario where a wind farm would be near a noisy speedway, but failed to mention that the cars aren't revving all night while people try to sleep. Turbine noise has been described as an insidious freight train that never arrives. Putting 400-foot structures on the viewshed is no trivial thing. It's an affront to nature in many ways. Those unwilling to cut back on fossil fuels are hypocritical to a point, but many are just tired of seeing the landscape wrecked to reduce our carbon footprint. What type of environmentalist can't see equal tragedy in Man's physical footprint?There was no effort to present solar panels on existing rooftops as a big alternative to wind. This is likely because the segments were done in Britain, which has minimal sunshine, but you can still generate solar power on cloudy days; just less of it. It's all relative. I'm not keen on industrial-scale solar plants that invade desert land, though they are much lower profile than turbines.For people who are tired of watching nature being industrialized, the amount of land being covered by turbines is just as depressing as the prospect of runaway climate change. Wind power seems like a classic Faustian bargain, and its emphasis spoiled this film for me.Piers Guy (the aforementioned wind developer) only had one small turbine on his farm. I wonder how ardent he'd remain if surrounded by dozens of giants? That's the true NIMBY test. Even if he'd personally be OK with it, it's still a travesty when turbines keep popping up in wild or bucolic landscapes, or can be easily seen from wilderness peaks and beaches. Future plans for their mass construction resemble a military invasion scenario.The segments about Nigeria and India (grossly overcrowded places) failed to emphasize the urgent need for birth control, which is arguably the best way to reduce overall energy demand and fix a host of other problems like urban sprawl and desecration of the landscape (see above). Poor people were portrayed as victims of circumstance, but they often dig their own holes by doing nothing to change overcrowded conditions.I did like the irony of the Indian airline entrepreneur, contrasted with flying as a wasteful, carbon-intensive activity.Global warming can be seen as primarily a population problem, and scientists say the Earth may only be able to support 2 billion people without fossil fuels (which the film noted indirectly in an animation). I found the emphasis on consumption vs. sheer human numbers to be overwrought, though still very important. Overall, this film was worth seeing but it sent too many mixed messages.

I can be quick on this one. It is a typically "smug liberal" kind of movie where you're go in the movie as a normal person and come out of it as a hippie anti-war anti-America watermelon -green from the outside, red from the inside- liberal.I saw it accidentally here on Dutch public television. And what a shame it was. The public broadcasters broadcasting propaganda that could have have been produced by the former Sovjet Union. However the level of speculation in the movie is so high that I doubt anyone will take it serious (except smug liberals). Although Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth is obviously exaggerated, at the very least there is some scientific evidence to support it. This movie is pure propaganda because it displays a future that is pure the speculation of some hippies.And nobody should see it. Be warned for a wasted afternoon or evening if you do.

I really enjoyed how this film approached the topic of climate change from many different angles. By comparing the lives of the different people featured in the film, one is able to see the variance that exists in how carbon use varies from one person to another. The Age of Stupid has a very interesting format. It is supposed to be a transmission that is recorded in the future as a sort of cautionary tale that was to be concealed in a time capsule that documents the the way that the human race eventually destroyed themselves as well as the rest of the world. It is a montage of actual footage from the news and other documentaries, sections that glimpse into the reality of real life characters documented, and commentary from the fictional character who is recording the "transmission."This was definitely a little out there in terms of format, but had a lot of important information that many people out in the world need to hear and take into consideration. The format may be a bit weird for some to warm up to, but if you can get past that, it is a touching documentary that inspires. In an age where a fairly large percentage of the population does not believe in man-influenced climate change, there's no shortage of stupidity. It's time for people to wake up and see if we can stop and maybe even reverse this damage we're doing to our home.