The paradox is right there in the title: If technological and societal progress is by definition positive, why has it brought our planet to the brink of disaster? Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks’s doc is not short on ambition—hopping from the rain forests of Brazil to the newly industrial areas of China—and its points are consistently cogent, as the movie takes in topics as diverse as the history of debt and overpopulation. But like the myriad dangers threatening the earth, the film is simply too unwieldy, a sprawling mass of ideas that are dutifully checked off and then given only superficial explanations in lieu of insightful explorations.
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