DiCaprio Eco-Freakout Tanks

It's a Hollywood truth universally acknowledged that any hit film is in want of a sequel. The "hit" film in question here is the Goracle's "An Inconvenient Truth," the former Veep's ridiculous propaganda screed masquerading as a documentary. (See Michael Moore.)

Not willing to let his bankable millions from successful film roles ("Titanic," "The Aviator," etc.) sit idle, Leonardo DiCaprio's tries to do the pompous Gore one better in his stultifying, me-too eco-epic "The 11th Hour." Unfortunately for Leo, his film investment is sinking faster than the Titanic after it drove into that fatal iceberg. (Although this will probably make his accountant happy.)

But that's not really the topic of this entry. More to the point is an interesting passage in which a Fox News reporter critic, Roger Friedman, drops the mask, probably unintentionally, to illustrate how he and his dishonest leftist friends will manipulate the truth to suit the Party's ideological aims.

I hesitated to say before "11th Hour" actually opened how mind-numbingly dull it was for fear that I would ruin it for those interested in the subject of global warming. But at Cannes, when the film by Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen was shown to journalists, nearly the entire room fell asleep.

A Russian filmmaker told us afterward that she was the only person in the room who was awake at one point.

The first sentence above says it all. Friedman confesses that he purposely held off these comments for 18 days. Why? To enable the maximum number of "Global Warming" true believers to shell out their (presumably) hard-earned dollars on a turkey that would bore even them. This, in turn, allowed the right-thinking DiCaprio to get some of his investment back before word of mouth sent this sinker to the DVD showers. Always help a comrade, right, Roger?

Had this film been a debunking of the "Global Warming" mythology, however, you can bet your sweet bippy that Friedman and his pals would have been heaping it with opprobrium even before it had been edited into the final cut.

Friedman is now feigning honesty, presumably, to free himself from being blamed for the film's box office failure. It's a nice twist, but it doesn't work. Friedman committed a sin of omission by allowing countless wallets of gullible eco-freak lambs to be led to the slaughter. The sin itself was disgusting. But his attempt at exoneration is disgraceful. Unwilling to break with the party line as a critic, he can now pretend to be a "reporter" who's "objectively" reporting the secondary news that the film has bombed in public release. Which he knew in advance that it would. What a convoluted way of trying to keep your street cred while still getting invited to the best leftist A-list parties. Inadvertently, Friedman provides us yet with another juicy example of why all leftists are essentially dishonest.

Now that he's granted himself reportorial absolution, Friedman can write what he should have written 18 days ago:

"The 11th Hour" is grindingly boring. Basically, a series of scientists, one after another, warn the audience that the world is coming to an end. These talking heads are interspersed with stock footage of melting glaciers. The film has the effect of Ambien — with no hangover post-nap.

So does all the "Global Warming" propaganda. It's turning into a metaphorical iceberg for this Titanic of a theory, flogged as it is by Congressional puffer pigeons and legions of dishonest, always grant-hungry academic scientists preening for the camera. Friedman can hardly believe that DiCaprio's film is "grindingly boring?" We can. "Global warming" hype itself jumped the shark long ago with the release of Al Gore's own exercise in agitprop. "11th Hour" is simply déjà vu all over again.