Who Killed the Electric Car?
I figured that this movie would be slightly less depressing than An Inconvenient Truth, or at least a little funnier, so I decided to give it a shot the other night (knowing full well that it would still be infuriating and depressing). Was I surprised in the end? No, I was infuriated and depressed (at the stupidity and greed or people). However, at least it wasn’t a complete downer in the end, as the final moments did give us some hope for the future. Still, I want an electric car. Too bad they’re all dead now.
I don’t really have too much to say about the film. It is after all a documentary. There isn’t supposed to be a plotline, it’s supposed to be at least a little biased (didn’t seem to be overly biased here, i.e. not done by Michael Moore, but they still slanted a couple of things along the way).
First off, I can say that while Martin Sheen is a fine actor, he shouldn’t do voiceovers. He doesn’t have the voice for it. James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, that movie preview guy, even Alec Baldwin, they do. Martin Sheen doesn’t.
Second, I know showing how even Mel Gibson had a hard time getting an EV1 shows how the car companies torpedoed their own cars is convincing, but showing him with is crazy-hobo-man beard, right after he got busted for being drunk and insane (somehow I doubt that the alcohol had anything to do with the insanity part), that doesn’t help your case as much. Showing clips of Tom Hanks on Letterman, or Ed Begley Jr. giving a eulogy to the EV1, those help.
Thirdly, if you’re going to over-use the same clip of them carting the cars off, try not to make it so obvious. I mean they used the same exact footage of the same car carrier like ten times in a row to make it seem like GM was carting off hordes and hordes of cars. Nice effect, but after the third time seeing the truck you notice that it’s the exact same one over and over again, thus losing the emphasis.
But in the end they did make a lot of good points. I was especially pleased to see that they didn’t focus in on one culprit and just beat that one person/company into the ground. They spread the blame around to just about everyone, showing how numerous people and organizations all managed to destroy the electric car.
And as a side little rant, I would like to talk about “fuel cells” as the next car technology. How did we ever get dooped by this? Sure, they are cleaner and that would help the pollution problem, but running a car on hydrogen? I don’t know where to begin with that one. One of the major concerns about cars today is that gas prices are too high and that we’ll run out of oil (truthfully how many people care that much about the environment? It’s a sad but true fact that a large number would probably drive a coal powered car if it cheap enough). Hydrogen isn’t exactly readily available, and the costs of filling up at the hydrogen pump would be terrible. Plus the capacity of these hydrogen cars (last I heard), gives them a range that’s even shorter than that of an electric car (which was one of the major drawbacks of the electric auto). Glad to see that we’ve mostly decided to move onto hybrids instead. It’s not the best solution, but it’s at least better than wasting time on hydrogen cars.
RATING: Worth a Full Price Ticket, Worth a Real Rental (or Netflix)