Woody's journey.

It is exciting to see celebrities make films about environmental issues, so it was with great anticipation that I watched Woody Harrelson's documentary Go Further (Mongrel Media, directed by Ron Mann), which recounts his 2001 road trip down the West Coast and attempts to highlight the role of personal decision-making in saving the Earth. Could this signal a new age in which the film industry finally uses its clout to get the word out to mainstream America? Not this time. In Go Further we are continually told that to be environmental we must do yoga, eat a raw-foods diet, avoid dairy and drop phrases like "mother Earth" in regular conversation. To be sure, the film makes some good points: consumers must demand accountability, composting is important, and solar power is good. And there is an interesting inside look at a Ruckus Society boot camp for civil disobedience. But overall, the presentation lacks sophistication and perpetuates the notion of environmentalism as a fringe subculture, while alienating the mainstream.