Laura Gabbert and Justin Shein's documentary on the lives of the Beavan family and the "No Impact Man," Colin Beavan's environmental experiment entertains, but does it educate? Colin Beavan somehow got the notion to see if he can live a normal, comfortable life with his family without making any negative impact on the environment. Obviously, this is a bit of a challenge, given his life in New York City, but he, his wife, and their baby daughter make the necessary sacrifices and succeed, at least in his mind. Of course, Colin being a writer and using the experiment and the soon-received publicity draws a lot of criticism from more "hardcore" environmentalists, but maybe the huge "publicity stunt" will do enough to cause those who are aware of it to make some little change in their lives that will ultimately do good for the environment.

Personally, I feel I'm a big part of the "disposable" society so I was immediately wary of being "preached" at. Ultimately, I felt the documentary was interesting and more about one family's journey towards environmental consciousness and less about telling the public to live our lives exactly like they did. I did take away some interesting information and tips that maybe I will apply to my own life (for instance, I'm interested in shopping at the Union Square food market for some of my groceries now).

Overall, the documentary was pretty entertaining and interesting to see what the family goes through. Particularly Colin's wife, Michelle, who wasn't really part of the "experiment" planning and seemed to be more just along for the ride. I think her story was pretty cool; the fact that she was the ultimate consumer: Starbucks every day and even spending almost $1000 on a pair of boots, and now she would be driven to even living without electricity for 6 months. I think her transformation was more interesting to watch than Colin's. On the other hand, I thought the added story of her attempts at a second child were somewhat unnecessary to the documentary and served to simply try to add emotional response to a documentary that didn't really need it. I can see where the critics are coming from with Colin being somewhat hypocritical, but in the end, I think he succeeded with his experiment and having his story out there doesn't hurt.