Article: Al Gore's global warming film: We've got the early review!

"Go see the DaVinci Code," said my friend Toni. No way! I don't want to watch someone get blown up and tortured and chased through Europe by an obsessed albino. I want to watch something light and fluffy. I've had a hard day.

First of all, my "get out of jail free" card didn't work and I spent the day behind bars. Of course I knew that I was in the slammer only because of a temporary job assignment but still...jail is jail.

Then I went to visit my friend in the hospital. The ICU. Ventilator tubes. IV drips. Sigh. Then I got into a big fight with my youngest daughter. And forgot to buy cat food. And my bicycle got a flat tire. It was one of those days. THEN my friend Jean called and said, "Jane! I've got free tickets to a sneak preview of the new Al Gore movie tonight. Wanna go?" Sure. Why not. The alternative would be to stay home with only the finale of American Idol for company. I'll go.

Perhaps I should have stayed home with Simon and Paula after all. What I learned from watching "An Inconvenient Truth" was that no matter how bad my life seemed to be, it was about to get inestimably worse.

"If even one-half of Greenland and Antarctica melts," Al Gore told us, "all these cities will be under water." He showed us a map. And THERE was my house! And, apparently, this catastrophe could happen within the next ten years. I gotta move to the hills.

But, in the end, I was glad that I went to see "An Inconvenient Truth". Obsessed albinos are strange, weird and interesting but don't really have anything to do with my own everyday life. But even though Al Gore's movie sometimes made me think of having to sit through a PBS documentary for science class, it really hit the nail on the head about something that is relevant, related and tied into my own life.

This movie will make us think. It will make us act. It is stark. There are no holds barred. It is truth. It is real. And it is scary.

Bottom line? I still don't like jail. I'm still angry with my daughter. My friend is still sick. But in the context of the extreme horror of possibilities that face us in the very near future if we don't do something IMMEDIATELY about greenhouse gases and stop farting around, we will be in more big trouble than anything we might possibly have experienced -- or even imagined -- so far. The jail, the daughter and the friend scenarios are just small and temporary things that can be easily fixed. "Compared to the dangers of global warming, even the threat of terrorism pales."

But global warming cannot be fixed -- unless we really really really really try. NOW.

I'm ready to go out and start trying. Watch the movie and you will be too.