We're all gonna die, weather or not.

Is it getting hot around here, or what?

The UK-produced The Age of Stupid is not your average in-your-face, on-your-conscience climate change documentary.

Filmmaker Franny Armstrong’s explosive collection of forecasts for irreversible doom are detonated by a strangely compelling fictional device.

The year is 2055. Inside a futuristic archive located on the rim of the Arctic Circle, an un-named record-keeper (played by Pete Postlethwaite) re-examines the data that led to the demise of the world as we know it.

According to the hypothetical premise proposed by The Age of Stupid, global warming melted down both the ecology and the economy of Earth in 2015.

Our addiction to fossil fuels (and lack of viable alternatives to same) triggered the calamity. We had our chance. We blew it. Yes, we are the "Stupid" name-checked in the title.

Operating a touch-screen time machine, Postlethwaite unspools a blooper reel of what we in the here and now have been doing to accelerate our own demise.

Think of it as Planet Earth’s Unfunniest Home Videos.

Not exactly a lively night out at the cinema then, huh?

Nevertheless, the rigourous conviction with which Armstrong attacks the subject of climate change warrants both the respect and the full attention of all viewers. That goes for the skeptics, the true believers, and everyone else in-between.

To gather the footage shown by Postlethwaite, Armstrong spent over four years roaming the globe.
An unobtrusive presence behind the camera, Armstrong is generally happy to let her fascinating posse of talking heads dictate the flow of information.

Some are passionate. Others are deluded. All are well worth listening to.

There is the Indian entrepreneur who believes his repeated endeavours to start his country’s first cut-price airline will end poverty on the sub-continent.

There are the residents of a small Nigerian village who are slowly being poisoned to death by the multi-national oil company who have set-up operations nearby.

An owner of a British wind farm finds himself becoming a social outcast because his neighbours believe his business will ramp down local real-estate values.

Most chillingly of all, a meteorologist sketches a graph on a foolscap pad, estimating how long we have left to curb (and then permanently reduce) carbon emissions before it is too late.

The guy might well be blowing hot air in our direction, but his prognosis of six years before we are all slowly microwaved into oblivion is still downright frightening to take in.

Oh, and one last thing : feel free to miss the opening 5 minutes if you like.

According to a computer-animated projection of the environmental Armageddon predicted by The Age of Stupid, Australia is odds-on to cop the worst of it.

The sight of Sydney Harbour trapped under an oil slick while the Opera House burns is bound to keep you thinking well after the final credits roll.