- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
91Who Killed the Electric Car? makes you angry, and also sad, to live in a country where innovation could be contrived into an enemy.
-
88The only question his movie doesn't ask is "What do you want your next car to run on?" That's up to you.
-
83They were fast, they were sexy, they were clean, they were the future -- and they're already gone.
-
83Who Killed the Electric Car? makes you feel that no good idea, let alone good deed, goes unpunished. Only the exuberance of the moviemaking keeps your spirits high.
-
80A potent hybrid of passion and politics fuel this energetic and highly compelling documentary.
-
80A murder mystery, a call to arms and an effective inducement to rage, Who Killed the Electric Car? is the latest and one of the more successful additions to the growing ranks of issue-oriented documentaries.
-
80Chris Paine's documentary makes an unapologetic case for the car and an unofficial indictment of the forces allied against it.
-
75Shaped just like the murder-mystery its title promises, the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? introduces us to the victim, then rounds up the suspects most likely responsible for its demise.
-
75In a sad twist of technological birth and infanticide, General Motors - with assists from the oil industry, the Bush administration, cowardly California energy officials and apathetic consumers - doomed the future car to the literal scrap heap of history.
-
75Paine doesn't hide his liberal mind-set, but he lets all sides - from GM suits to Ralph Nader - have their say. By the closing credits, there's little doubt who killed the electric car.
-
75As efficient and zippy as its subject.
-
75A balanced examination of the reasons for the electric car's disappearance, reasons that include corporate collusion and greed, governmental spinelessness and oil company propaganda -- but also consumer indifference and the limitations of the vehicles themselves.
-
75By the end of the film, you actually come to mourn the passing of the EV1, a well-intentioned soul that was in the right place at the right time, but was surrounded by the wrong people.
-
75There is an element of murder mystery and an edge of conspiracy thriller to Chris Paine's documentary about the rise and fall of General Motors' EV1 (Electric Vehicle 1).
-
75Above all, the film is an extended love letter to the EV1, a sleek GM electric marvel that, by Paine's reckoning, marks the single greatest innovation in human technology since the wheel.
-
70So who did kill the electric car? There are many suspects, and as it turns out, most of them are guilty.
-
70By the end of Who Killed the Electric Car? you'll be worked into a lather one way or another. Paine crams in more theories, ideas and arguments than the movie can easily hold, but that's OK with me.
-
70It's a laudably complicated, if emotional and a little comic-book goofy, story of how a confluence of forces - industry skepticism, trained-seal lobbyists and, last but not least, consumer reluctance - undermined the future of a quiet little bean of mobile metal that the anointed few who could afford to lease it passionately adored.
-
70Fascinating documentary.
-
70Oil companies aren't the only ones profiting from a spike in prices at the gas pump. It's likely also to boost the prospects of Who Killed the Electric Car? a likable if partisan post-mortem on the now-defunct auto.
-
70Who Killed the Electric Car?, a fascinating feature-length documentary by Chris Paine, opens with a mock funeral, then follows the structure of a mock trial in which multiple suspects are found guilty.
-
70Nihilistic greed was the major factor when GM terminated the car in 2001, though Paine is also careful to note the passivity of the general public.
-
67You'll leave the film wondering why you've never seen a TV ad for an electric car, or why GM is all about selling Hummers these days.
-
63Impassioned, unwieldy and padded with celebrity interviews.
-
63Paine does offer something of a heroine in Chelsea Sexton; the attractive EV1 sales specialist was laid off in 2001, became an EV1 activist and is now executive director of Plug In America.
-
60A story that deserves to be heard, but like the EV1, it's a quiet achievement that should have been much louder.
-
50A lot of the film is illuminating; a lot of it is pointless.
-
The real question is why this purportedly impassioned documentary investigation of a great subject--the culture's conspiratorial dismissal of eco-friendly alternatives to the gas-guzzler -- would assume such massive viewer disinterest that it coats the pill with C-list celebrity NutraSweet, including Martin Sheen voiceovers -- that would sound unforgivably hackneyed even on basic cable.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 18 out of 19
-
Mixed: 0 out of 19
-
Negative: 1 out of 19
-
JeffM.8
-
JeffS.0