Life After People (2008) (TV)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

David de Vries

Writer:

David de Vries (writer)

Release Date:

21 January 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary

Tagline:

What If

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

No Survivors | Debris | No Cast Of Characters Credits | Building Collapse | Big Ben London

Awards:

Nominated for 3 Primetime Emmys.

Cast

Struan Rodger	...	Himself - Narrator (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
John Anderson	...	Himself
David Brin	...	Himself
Bill Bruninga	...	Himself
Ron Chesser	...	Himself
Ray Coppinger	...	Himself
Eric Doehne	...	Himself
Sergey Gashchak	...	Himself
John Hadidian	...	Himself
Kevin Harrison	...	Himself
Gordon Masterton	...	Himself
Nabil Nasr	...	Himself
Alex Nickson	...	Himself
Dr. Howard Oliver	...	Himself
Stephen R. Palumbi	...	Himself (as Steve Palumbi)
Alan W. Pense	...	Himself
Mary Sackett	...	Herself
Eric Sanderson	...	Himself

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Australia:G

Company:

Flight 33 Productions

Goofs:

Factual errors: The Sears Tower is referred to as the tallest man-made structure in North America. This in incorrect; Sears Tower stands at 442 meters tall, while the CN Tower in Toronto is 553.33 meters tall, exceeding the height of the supposed "tallest man-made structure" by 111.33 meters.

Movie Connections:

Followed by "Life After People" (2009)

OK subject but stretched too thin and overly-reliant on effects that have been done better elsewhere

You can see this coming a mile away in the TV guide and, even when I watched it hoping for more, it did just what it suggested it would. There are lots of "what if" films out there and some of them are genuinely interesting and informative, however Life After People is not one of them. Instead it goes down the road of so many of them and just focuses on the special effects of the "what if" rather than the substance. This approach makes for a good 30 minute long programme, I'll give you that, but here the idea is stretched out to 90 minutes, with plenty of advert breaks to help you along.

The effects are pretty good though; not Hollywood standards by any means but for the minute they are pretty good and reasonably imaginative. It doesn't help to be shown the same shots over and over again though because it does make the viewer realise just how much padding there is throughout. The experts are all on hand to provide justification and explanation but none of them can get passed the problem that it is not that interesting a question in the first place due to its lack of relevance. They all take about how quickly nature will come back in etc but nobody can make it important or interesting beyond the "oh, that's nice" level of interest. I know there is debate about how quickly things would really happen versus what was said in this film but for me the bigger thing to work out is why it manages to make me care so little? Life after People provides effect shots of buildings falling and cities overgrown. As such it is already competing with Hollywood sci-fi's with much bigger budgets to play with. It does an OK job with this but has nowhere near enough to show or talk about to fill even half of the running time and just gets repetitive and dull long before it is over. A shame really, because it would be a better film had the pressure not been on to fill space as much as possible whether the film merited it or not.