CRUSTY eco-hippies spin random anecdotes about olden times in “Earth Days,” a turgid documentary on the environmental movement in the 1960s and ’70s.
The movie, which grandly introduces authors and activists such as hippie astronaut Rusty Schweickart and the guy who wrote The Whole Earth Catalog, mingles campy footage of
Eisenhower-era wonderment with doom-laden futurism and images of hippies beating up an innocent car with sledgehammers at 1970’s first Earth Day.
This bongs-and-bongos gang’s preposterously sour outlook — “The Population Bomb” author Paul R. Ehrlich is shown, circa 1970, predicting that “some time in the next 15 years the end will come” — is topped only by its serene confidence that someday they’ll look less ridiculous. Today’s global warming catastrophism is nothing new.
On the bright side, Stephanie Mills, introduced as “the Radical” who in a 1969 commencement speech (“The Future Is a Cruel Hoax”) mused about the likelihood of humanity turning to cannibalism for food, took it upon herself to solve the population problem by promising never to have children. She turned out to be true to her word. So that’s one fewer hemp-clothed kid named Rain or Moss contributing to overcrowding.
Even the most ardent ’70s-style doom lover would be happier watching “Soylent Green” again than submitting to the meandering, oozing earnestness of this documentary.
Running time: 102 minutes. Not rated (disturbing images). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.