As you have no doubt noticed, my early-morning review of Randy Olson's Sizzle was part of a concerted effort to get blogs to review the movie all on the same day. It's an experiment of sorts in using blogs to promote the movie.
Unfortunately for Olson, it seems to be an experiment designed to test the old adage that "there's no such thing as bad publicity, as long as they spell your name right." Most of the blog reviews collected at the ScienceBlogs page for the film were, um, less than glowing. My own kind of "Meh." review is one of the better ones on ScienceBlogs.
Having looked at a whole bunch of these reviews, I have two meta-comments that I would like to make regarding the whole thing:
1) I was genuinely surprised at how many people were confused about the format. Granted, I went in knowing it was a mockumentary (it says so on the promotional website), but it seemed pretty obvious to me that it wasn't all real. The only point where I had any doubts was in the sequence with Dr. Chilingarian, who was almost too perfectly goofy to be real. I thought it was perfectly clear which people were actors and which people were real.
2) This isn't really surprising to me, but I thought it was interesting that the most positive reviews came from non-scientists, while the scientists writing reviews were more negative (it's not a perfect correlation-- Jake Young wrote the most positive review I've seen). The most convenient pair to illustrate this is Jennifer Ouellette and Sean Carroll-- they both had doubts about the movie, but her review reads as much more favorable than his.
As I said, this isn't really a surprise to me. Most of the complaints from scientists were of the form "It needed more data," which probably counts as missing the point in a way that illustrates the point. It was interesting to see, though.
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I'd never heard of this movie, or of Olson, before seeing Janet Stemwedel's review today. My sense is that the ScienceBlogs crew mostly preaches coordinated Manichean storylines to a largely receptive audience (look how willingly all these bloggers lined up to participate in this story!) and are baffled by someone taking swipes in a variety of directions.
Even Jake Young, who at least gets it, feels compelled to explain that in addition to those wicked, wicked people "that we are all used to arguing against", there are others who might deserve some ridicule.
I'm one of the non-scientists who reviewed the film, and I'd argue that the lack of data will annoy even non-scientific types, especially if they are looking for conclusive evidence about why they are being confronted with so many mixed messages about global warming.
In fact, the film left the people with whom I saw the film even more confused about the existence, cause, and effects of global warming. And while some people may have been confused by the mockumentary format, I think most of us were just frustrated by it because it seemed to rely so heavily on ethnic, sexual, and racial stereotypes.
Chuck, you pretty much nail it with that comment.
I follow global warming/climate change sort of closely, so I can't say I was as confused as a "normal" person; I saw where Olson and friends wanted to go, but they kept tripping themselves.
As you said, what really turned me off and derailed my attention - as with the other people who screened the movie with me - were the stereotypes jokes. A few are ok, but 90 minutes' worth when I'm supposed to be watching a movie about global warming is plain ridiculous.
(My review is here, btw: http://tinyurl.com/sizzle-movie)
I'm one of the scientists who reviewed it (click my link) but also like it quite a bit. Should I feel bad? I don't think I'm going to feel bad.
I am a scientist, but I intentionally watched it with the eyes of an Average Joe - and ended up liking it as well and writing a positive review.
I'm gonna have to disagree with Chuck and Dave about us "non-scientist" types; I only occasionally follow global warming/climate change topics, although I do keep tabs on renewable energy technologies (it's a physics thing). And I think the message the film sends, quite clearly, is that global warming is real and even the skeptics don't dispute that; the disagreement lies in how that evidence should be interpreted and translated into policy. This is an important point that the Average Joe does NOT understand, and keeping the lecturing about data to a minimum allowed this to come through loud and clear. (Olson asked the same basic final questions of all his subjects, which helped drive home this message.)
It all comes down to target audience, I think. Olson is trying to reach the Average Joe who hasn't really heard much about it except on the news (talk about lack of data!) -- not a scientifically literate audience (or even science fans like Dave and Chuck, who have already bought into the scientific mindset). He's not trying to preach to the converted.
His message to the scientific community ALSO comes through loud and clear: they're not very good about reaching out to the unwashed masses (although they rock at communicating with those who already Believe). Some scientists just don't want to hear that message.... And that's too bad.