from Film Forum, 11/09/06
If you couldn't bring yourself to spend money on a documentary hosted by Al Gore, perhaps you'll find The Great Warming to be a welcome alternative.
Assembled from a three-part Canadian television series that was broadcast in 2004, Warming presents an optimistic perspective on the various efforts being made to grapple with environmental change around the world. The film is narrated by Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morrissette.
While the film is receiving some promotion in Christian communities, there are no prominent examinations of the film in religious press publications yet.
Variety calls it "a kinder, gentler global warming docu. If [An Inconvenient Truth] preached to the tree-hugging choir, Great, which comes heralded by prominent Evangelicals and was previewed in local churches, seems designed to redefine ecology as a crucial Christian cause." They conclude that it's "a more diffuse and prettier case for global calamity that accents the positive and stresses the possibility of reversing the planet's headlong rush to extinction."
William Arnold (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) says it "does a solid job of dealing with the problem but with enough originality that it's not an exact duplication of the Gore film."
Other mainstream critics are divided. Some find it to be an important, educational film, while others aren't impressed with the approach.