I recently saw this film at an advanced screening in San Francisco. I was able to speak with the directors of this film in a Q + A and in person.
First off, I've worked with Paul Hawken on the WiserEarth.org project. So I was personally excited to see him in the film.

This film is not a film about global warming. It is about the sustainability of human culture.

As anyone who has read Ishmael, the story of B, or listened to Kenny's comments in the film, they understand that when humun culture's move beyond their ecological limits, the cultures go extinct. This is a large concept, and the most important one we as a culture have ever contemplated. If this film is able to bring this level of thinking into the popular imagination, then it would be, as Paul said, "What an exciting time to be alive."

The film did lack a bit of momentum for the first third, at least it seemed to me. My thinking may have been skewed because, as I watched it without foreknowledge of the eventual outcome, I thought they were taking the subject too broadly and would never be able to fill the breadth with any depth. And I also thought that the inter-splicing of so many different people would not allow a coherent narrative.

Well I was extremely surprised, I admit, when I was totally wrong about this. The film somehow silently gains momentum about a third of way through, and never once loses it for the rest of the film. The soundtrack is wonderful, but I was usually to busy thinking to hear it.
The reason I thought it was too broad in the beginning was because I thought this movie was about global warming, just another inconvenient truth. The film addresses our intention as a human species, it addresses sustainability, it frames the discussion in the true parameters in which global warming resides.

If this film gains popular exposure and acceptance, the impetuous to change our society will never be stronger. I've been in the streets on this fundamental issue for many years, this may be the thing that brings the soccer moms and senior citizens out there with the us 20-somethings too.

Speaking with Nadia, she philosophized that real change may not happen until this is seen as a human rights movement. Comparing this movement with the civil rights movement, and the amount of social unrest and cohesion which propelled that through the laggard politicians of the day.  

"Make the connection" as Leonardo said. This film challenges the viewer to realize the connections between the actions of humanity and the myriad environmental impacts. Are droughts in Africa, melting ice sheets in the Antarctic, and large hurricanes in the US simply isolated incidents? David Suzuki notes in the film that there is not humanity and nature, we are nature. Paul Hawken's latest book, Blessed Unrest, speaks to the interconnection of the social justice and environmental sustainability movements, saying there is no such thing as a difference between them for that same reason. The book also claims that all of the disparate groups and people in the NPO and NGO sector are all part of one movement, an "immune response" the collective organism of humanity to the pathogens of power, corruption, and degradation.

This film's highest value is that it shows us the truth of interconnectedness.

A note about the leaders in this film. For one, if you can look at Stephen Hawking and still think that global warming proponents are uninformed, you've drank the kool-aid and may never come back. Also, many of these leaders have been saying these things for more than twenty years, but only now is the public starting to listen to what they are saying. Bill McKibben wrote The End of Nature in 1989, and his conclusions are still the same today.

One thing many conservatives don't want to admit, their worldview took us to Iraw on bald faced lies, while the worldview of the barefoot granola hitting the streets on Feb 15 was 100% accurate. Now should we ask, which worldview was more attenuated with the truth?

This movie is transideological, caring about the quality of life for the future of humanity should never be wrapped up transient and petty politics, religion, or business. When sustainability is not built into these institutions, they do not exist for long on this earth.
As Paul said, "Life creates the conditions for life."

Well, perhaps your reading of this review shows someone a little over-enthused on the subject. I contend that watching this movie will give you exactly this empowered sense. As Bill McDonough says we get to image what it means to "re-design design itself." This is really the context of the movie, the path that humanity must walk if our culture is to survive. What a worldview based in truth will not obfuscate.

-Daniel Bell
you can reach me online at wiserearth.org/user/danielbell