User Reviews

One life. One lifetime. What does it all add up to? Imagine if you could see, piled up in front of you, all the things you will ever use and consume in your lifetime. How many cups of tea will you drink? How many tonnes of faeces will you create? How many words will you speak? How many tears will you cry? This film is the answer to these questions and others as it attempts to take the average footprint of each and every person in the UK and uses two children to chart the resources that they will use and the waste they will produce over their coming lifetimes.

With environmental issues becoming more and more important and more and more in the media, this film seemed like an interesting look at the average footprint of the average British individual. Sadly what it actually was, was a visualisation of the UK statistical average of various things such as the number of baths, the amount of milk we drink, the amount of faeces we produce, the amount of toilet paper we use, the amount of sex we have and so on. In this regard it is actually pretty good because it is structured well from cradle to grave and uses the statistics well to produce plenty of amusing visual treats.

These include loads of eggs being dropped on a stone floor, a lifetime of new clothes hung outdoors, rubber ducks on an English lake, an outdoor pool of beer and so on. In doing this you can see where the heart of the film is, because the visual design is all. The film tries to do more than this by occasionally pushing an environmental message that hits home (eg the length of time taken for shower gel chemicals to disappear) but it is too infrequent to make it worthy or impacting. Tennant's narration is quite light hearted and his slightly cheeky tone suits the silly script. The problem is that this light-hearted approach does rather prevent it being a serious documentary with a point to be made beyond the visual design.

Experts talking about how the average is arrived at here and there doesn't cut it for me; not did one environmentalist popping up here and there and basically tut-tutting in a rather obvious fashion. I expected it to shock me but to be honest, some of it is acceptable – a bath of beans doesn't seem that unreasonable over seventy years. The environmental stats are too busy being statistically interesting to be able to have time to be shocking or challenging and as a result I found myself bemused by the amount of stuff laid out in front of me.

In fairness this was the concept that the film set out to deliver and it does do this well. Superficial and bemusing but it would have been nice if it could have had some real substance, food for thought or challenge for the viewer at the same time.

I think some things are so special, that you are literally left speechless. You don't want to spoil it by saying anything, but just think about it for a while. This is exactly how I felt after having watched this film.

I didn't sit down expecting a lecture on how to save the environment, or how we could all be doing so much more, and that is not what this programme was about. I think a lot of people were upset about the moral message being overshadowed by the impressive visuals and lighthearted voice-over, however I stand by that people do what they can, and if they're too lazy to change, then no matter what amount of lecturing and shock tactics will really make them any better.

The show basically just rolls out a bunch of digits- averages of things that will occur in a person's lifetime, like the people they will meet, the tears they will cry and so on. While watching it however, and perhaps I should be ashamed of this(?), I was not thinking about what a ghastly person I am making such a dent in the world, I was just intrigued.

This was an absolutely beautiful piece of work, and was both interesting and quirky. No one could have been better suited to narrate it that David Tennant, who makes it all a little less heavy, and it was entertaining to watch.

I personally would love to see this again, and would certainly buy it if it comes out on DVD. If it is repeated then it is definitely worth a try at least, even if you don't feel you can sit through all of it. I think it is more a piece of art than anything, and should be appreciated as that.

What is disguised as a benign documentary on what is necessarily consumed to maintain humans on this planet, turns out to be European propaganda on the overindulging Americans.

A cutie voice (Catherine Collins) follows what is supposed to be two typical (Americans) through their lifetime. We see the tremendous amount of food they eat and other things they buy to live well as the standard nuclear family.

The visuals are impressive as they count clothes, cars, houses, etc.

They make it look bad to have international commerce. They pick on coal for fueling the world suspiciously ignoring other energies such as soler or wind. They suggest using light bulbs that contain mercury.

Then they suggest things that have been recycled for decades are just being thrown away.

I can tolerate all these purposely spun misconceptions. But when they show Houses without libraries and suggest that we only read about 400+ books in a lifetime (a polite way of saying we are ignorant) then that is too much.

There is a newer version (2023) It picks on everyone equally as it focuses on different subjects still related to the "Human Footprint."