We're Doomed. We'll Never Make It.

 

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A LIFE ON OUR PLANET (B+) - In which the great-grandfather of nature documentary narrators will depress the hell out of you as he explains the horrors he has seen served on this Earth during his 93 years romping across it.

This valedictory, the work of three directors, lets Attenborough, in that distinctive voice, traipse across the decades, telling both his own personal story and society's. Biographical material mixes with reminiscences, and it is all leavened by one long cautionary tale about what we've done to the planet in the past century. As he intones in the trailer, "Human beings have overrun the world."

Attenborough calls it a "witness statement" and "vision for the future." It's a last call before lights-out in our collective climate cocoon. He promises to offer salvation in the final reel, but I'm afraid the overwhelming bulk of the 83 minutes here tilts toward doom and gloom so much that no cheery bromides or miracle cures will instill enough hope in the average viewer to walk away more than a tad optimistic. But that's not this 93-year-old storyteller's problem for much longer.

LIFE AFTER PEOPLE (2008) (B) - Cheesy but fascinating, this 108-minute exercise in computer-enhanced conjecture purports to show us what the planet will look like in the days, weeks, years, and centuries after the last human has exited Earth. This was the pilot that launched two seasons of TV episodes on your dad's History Channel.

The CGI seems a little crude, even by the standards of the Aughts, and the talking heads look and sound like outcasts from a VH-1 "I Love the ..." special, but you have to give credit to writer-director David de Vries (who disappeared after this final project) for imagining such a spectacle. He methodically walks us through the presumed evolution of the planet -- a lot of skyscrapers shot through with plant life and teeming with wildlife -- in the absence of humans.

Far-flung talking heads speculate with one foot in science and the other in science fiction. One imagines cats evolving into feral flying felines amid the upper floors of those abandoned skyscrapers. As we eventually move into the passage of centuries, it's fascinating to watch this version of Earth purge its human parasite and heal. David Attenborough would be envious.