By Jon Cooksey
There's plenty of serious documentaries on the world's environmental problems. How to Boil a Frog takes a different approach, mixing fast-paced comedy with hard-hitting facts to help make complex subjects both understandable and more engaging.
This highly entertaining film features everyman dad narrator, Jon Cooksey (a screenwriter in real life), who is a guy worried about his daughter's future. Cooksey effectively plays a dozen different characters in the film to illustrate his points, from a lab-coated scientist to a surfer. He recounts his own wake-up moment, on the subject of climate change, and his subsequent discovery that global warming is part of a bigger problem: "global overshoot" ¨C humans putting too much demand on our limited natural world.
After presenting the consequences of overshoot, Jon launches into a clever review of five major problems and how they're connected: overpopulation, the war on nature, income inequality, peak oil and finally global warming. From there, he offers a set of positive solutions that can be accomplished by individuals and families to help turn things around. Along with the comedy, the movie interweaves high quality animation and world-class experts in relevant fields (presented both briefly and humorously) to help encourage both awareness and action.
Reviews
~ "A feisty little film which is down-home in style, and humorous." - Vancouver Sun
~ "Ambitious and insightfully practicalĄI give this one high marks. (Cooksey) has tapped in to an important way to communicate tough issues to an increasingly distracted audience: make 'em laugh. He presents it all with an edgier take on the whole Bill Nye the Science Guy vibe. Only, the PG-13 version. Hey, it works for Jon Stewart." - Transition Voice
Awards
~ Best Environmental Film, FilmShift Film Festival
~ Best Documentary & Best Director, Los Angeles Movie Awards
~ Best Green Film, Mammoth Film Festival
~ Finalist, Screenwriting Award, Writer's Guild of Canada
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