Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Emily A

  
  Movies to Feel Guilty To, Volume Seven. It's strange, as a child I DO remember electric cars around, but I never gave much thought to what happened to them, if anything. I didn't realize they had actually been actively killed by various forces, lobbies and interests. Grrr.… More
  Movies to Feel Guilty To, Volume Seven. It's strange, as a child I DO remember electric cars around, but I never gave much thought to what happened to them, if anything. I didn't realize they had actually been actively killed by various forces, lobbies and interests. Grrr. This is a very good, well-researched, engaging and informative documentary that makes you care about eco-infrastructure and want to get involved. I am very glad I saw this, and I ended up seeing it twice.

• Megan S

  
  I thought it was pretty interesting and well put together.

• Michael G

  
  Who Killed the Electric Car starts off interesting but after about the first 20 minutes just generally keeps retreading the same 3 or 4 points. Martin Sheen's narration doesn't quite fit either--it's like he had a mouthful of Werther's Originals in his mouth while… More
  Who Killed the Electric Car starts off interesting but after about the first 20 minutes just generally keeps retreading the same 3 or 4 points. Martin Sheen's narration doesn't quite fit either--it's like he had a mouthful of Werther's Originals in his mouth while he recorded it. This documentary is definitely informative when it doesn't dwell on annoying activists who love the sound of their own voices. The United States as a country is poisoned by the greed of the oil and automotive industry, we get it. It sucks but stalking a car you used to drive in a losing battle is just creepy and weird. The Phyllis Diller bit at the beginning was perplexing to me but Mel Gibson's attempt to look like Moses with the Sweetest Beard Ever (it looked like he had a big white tongue!) hypnotized me. But probably what surprised me the most was that none of the people in this documentary referred to the electric car as Jesus. I mean, they may as well have. This movie made me want to buy a Hummer at the end. It annoyed me that much...

• James A

  
  A really great documentary showing how money controls everything and how America is filled with zombies that buy what big business tells us to buy.

• Nate Z

  
  [center][img]http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/3859/attualitafotoborat20a20cf8.jpg[/img] [/center] [font=Arial][color=DarkRed] Borat – It’s niiiiiiice. It seems like Napoleon Dynamite impressions are being replaced by Borat impression, and this can only be for the better. I say… More
  [center][img]http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/3859/attualitafotoborat20a20cf8.jpg[/img] [/center] [font=Arial][color=DarkRed] Borat – It’s niiiiiiice. It seems like Napoleon Dynamite impressions are being replaced by Borat impression, and this can only be for the better. I say this without a hint of sarcasm – Sacha Baron Cohen should have been nominated for Best Actor. He is simply brilliant as he stays in character through every second of a road trip through America, running across all sorts of people and turning them into unwitting co-writers. Cohen’s film succeeds both as a pee-your-pants funny outrageous crude comedy but also as a socio-political examination on bigotry and tolerance in America. What makes so Borat so loveable is how innocent Cohen makes him seem even when he’s spouting racist, sexist, inflammatory ignorance. It’s amazing that people will buy his whopping tales of life in Kazakhstan because we as a nation have a willful ignorance about world culture. The scripted bits stand out like a conclusion with Pamela Anderson, but it’s still amazing they worked out as cohesive a story as they did for this movie. Borat is the best comedy of the year, hairy naked man wrestling and all. Nate’s Grade: A- Hard Candy – Pedophilia is all the rage, though people are misusing the term most of the time. Pedophilia denotes an attraction to pre-pubescent kids, not, say, a 16 year-old girl. But anyway, this is a nice little firecracker of a film that pushes the audience into increasingly uncomfortable moral quagmires. I enjoyed being made uncomfortable, being forced to question who was in the right, when the truth of the matter is neither party, the accused pedophile or the vengeful 14 year-old girl, is totally justified in their actions and not entirely unjustified. Ellen Page gives a shocking and intense performance, one of the year’s biggest surprises. She’s a skinny coil of rage, deception, and questionable ethics. Most of the film is just watching two actors argue back and forth, each vying for dominance, and the results are pretty absorbing. The movie trips up late by spelling things out when it should have remained a nagging mystery. Sure it’s not entirely believable but damn if it doesn’t put you into a tight spot. Nate’s Grade: B+ Half Nelson – Ryan Gosling gives a devastating performance as an inner city schoolteacher addicted to crack. This is a thoughtful look at friendship and vice as Gosling befriends one of his female students and becomes something of a mentor, trying to steer her in a good direction. The film is refreshing because of how awkward and authentic it is, and it does not pull punches; there are no happy endings or storylines wrapped with bows. The biggest drawback from this powerful film is that it’s too insular and doesn’t get much of an outside perspective. Scenes have a tendency to drag, but the movie is set ablaze by the troubled yet hopeful turn by Gosling, already firmly established as the most astonishing talent of his age. Who ever would have guessed a former Mousekateer would be our next Marlon Brando? Nate’s Grade: B+ Who Killed the Electric Car? – The answer should be pretty obvious. However, this is not a slapped together bundle of liberal outrage. This is a lucid and refined argument that car companies, oil companies, and other interests essentially turned back the clock on invention and progress, something that is deeply upsetting. The market for an electric car was here and continues to be here, and this film shows that the car companies would rather destroy every electric car and pretend it never existed. This documentary relies on a lot of talking heads, many in the auto industry or former electric car drivers, but the information is easy to grasp and does not overwhelm the viewer. All I can say is, thank God for the Japanese. When the electric cars were up and zooming, car companies proposed their own cleaner-air alternative, the hydrogen car, something we’re told is never going to happen. But the Japanese were so scared by the amount of talk American car companies made that they themselves developed a hybrid car while their American competitors were just twiddling their thumbs idly. Well done, Nation of the rising sun. Nate’s Grade: B+[/color][/font]

• Ross C

  
  A thoroughly entertaining documentary about California's adoption and later assassination of the electric car - it even made me want to buy a Saturn EV1. Seriously it's a worring look a current US politics.

• ashley h

  
  It shows how this was not a partisan shutdown or one side vs. another. Big money simply did the talking at the expense of the average American taxpayer,who could desperately use a car like this. Especially with gass prices the way they are.

• meril l

  
  11/29/06: I had definitely never heard about these electric cars; I was practically in tears watching these beautiful, spotless cars being crushed for no reason. A neat documentary, though it could certainly have been better. But that is the lot of the documentary I suppose. More… More
  11/29/06: I had definitely never heard about these electric cars; I was practically in tears watching these beautiful, spotless cars being crushed for no reason. A neat documentary, though it could certainly have been better. But that is the lot of the documentary I suppose. More charming and approachable than Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth,' and certainly less of a head-on shocker; in that way it made more of a change in me than 'Truth.' I salute the filmmakers.

• Andrew P

  
  As documentaries go this isn't the most interesting or engaging of them all, but if you are mildly interested in the subject of all this climate change and emissions then it is worth the watch. While very one sided its an interesting look at some of the dodgy thing's that go… More
  As documentaries go this isn't the most interesting or engaging of them all, but if you are mildly interested in the subject of all this climate change and emissions then it is worth the watch. While very one sided its an interesting look at some of the dodgy thing's that go on in the world of big companies. While some of the conclusions made are a little bit dumbfound and common sense, it isnt a horrible film to kill 2 hours watching.

• Lee K

  
  A very informative documentary.Why would the government allow an electric car and then they would lose money on gas prices?

• Tom S

  
  I liked this movie because it was not afraid to let us laugh, even at these quirky car owners.

• Richard F

  
  Anyone who does not watch this movie is doing a huge disservice to themselves. I'm lending this movie to everyone I know!

• Sarah P

  
  This documentary isn't great for it's filmmaking - it needs to be seen for the subject matter - electric cars exist and we could all be driving them now while saving ourselves and the planet from imminent destruction.

Read all 13 featured audience ratings