No Impact Man

TedFlicks Rating:

$2 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.

It is difficult to do justice to the remarkable achievement of directors Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein in their 93 minute documentary, “No Impact Man.”  The have taken one of today’s hottest subjects, saving the planet, and turned it into a cure for insomnia.  Pic poses as a cinema verite account of one year in the life of author Colin Beavan, his wife, BusinessWeek senior writer Michelle Conlin, and their toddler daughter but it’s really just a reality show in disguise, a very bad reality show.

Plot is this:  Environmentalist Beavan, driven by guilt over his impact on the earth and in need of a subject for his next book (the tome bows September 8, 2009) decides to live for one year with no environmental impact whatever – and drag his family along. The idea is to see what works and what doesn’t.  It’s a hare-brained scheme.  These people live in a Fifth Avenue co-op apartment inManhattan.  The idea that one can have no environmental impact is an impossible dream even for hermit living in a cabin and foraging for food. What they can do is have less environmental impact, but more on that later.  One has to wonder, however, what the net cut in impact is when distribution of prints, film promotion, and the environmentally conscious film crew shooting and editing their every move is factored in.

What makes pic a snoozer is partly the editing – there’s too much of Colin and Michelle answering questions from the filmmakers, and although they are articulate, neither is charming – and partly a shortage of action. Their two-year-old daughter steals her every scene.  And it’s tough to feel empathy for a couple of self-centered yuppies.

To achieve his goal of no impact, Colin abandons electricity, automobiles, the subway, buses, processed food, any food produced more than 250 miles from New York City.  He also abandons disposable diapers and toilet paper.  He recycles his milk bottles.  He shops at the farmer’s market.  He buys only used clothing and appliances.   He does, however, take a couple of train trips upstate to the farm where his milk is produced, and does some high-energy consuming radio and TV interviews.

Here’s what we learn:  Compost boxes are not appropriate to aManhattan apartment.  They attract flies which produce offspring in exponential quantity.  Cloth diapers are fine if one does not mind washing them.  A non-cooking, coffee guzzling scribe (Michelle) can learn to cook and like it and can live without caffeine.  Riding a bicycle is fun. Combine that with eating no junk food and one loses weight.  Not watching TV is sometimes a blessing. Gardening in an urban area can be a pleasant pastime.  Living without electricity is a pain.  Yuppies have no clue how to use candlelight safely. Kids love fountains in public parks. Dragging your wife into your hare-brained scheme can have unintended consequences for your marriage.

“No Impact Man” is not rated by the MPAA.  It doesn’t matter.  Although earnest, educational, and not unsuitable for children, it will not find much of an audience beyond environmental fanatics.  That’s too bad.  A more compelling film could have driven home some practical pointers about environmental responsibility in an attractive package to which auds may respond positively.  After watching this, your critic had to suppress a desire to get Chinese take-out in a dsposable Styrofoam container.

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