Tom Shadyac — the man who directed Ace Ventura, Liar Liar, and Evan Almighty — got into a life-changing bike accident. The crash left him super depressed and with post-concussion syndrome. When he finally got over it, he sold his house, moved to a trailer park, gave away most of his money, and made a documentary, I Am. The trailer for this movie is so easy to make fun of that in good conscience, we shouldn’t. It’s like making fun of a three-legged cat trying to enter the the four-legged-cat race: It’s trying so hard! It’s so sweet! Its intentions are so good! But it’s out of its league. Poor kitty. Poor Tom. For the doc, Shadyac spoke with scientists in order to “spark a conversation around challenging and rarely asked questions: What’s wrong with our world? What can we do about it?” While having these conversations, Shadyac was regaled with bromides about how science shows us we’re all lovely and interconnected, without being regaled with any actual science. Some sample totally unsupported revelations include:
• “Science has discovered elements that undermine everything we’ve been told about how we work and the world works.”
• “We are more interconnected with each other at a fundamental level than people realized or previously thought.”
• “The basis of nature is cooperation and democracy; it’s in our DNA.”
• “The science shows us that we are all connected.”
• “This is the most profound discovery in all of physics.”
• “We are born to be our brother’s keeper, it’s the way we are wired.”
• “This is the emerging story, we are far grander than we’ve been told.”
The takeaway here is that — holy adorable three-legged kittens! — the world is actually wonderful and great. Yay! Hugs! Kisses! Humans are good! You can sleep well tonight, because Tom Shadyac knows, “We started by asking what’s wrong with the world, and we ended up discovering what’s right with it.”
