Life's Story

An agenda-driven, pseudoscientific assault on the theory of evolution, obviously designed for educational settings in which creationism or the doctrine of “intelligent design” is taught, the basic thrust of Life's Story's argument—advanced by a British-accented narrator over some nice footage of fish and wildlife—is that because species today cannot cross-breed, all existing species must always have existed (or must have been simultaneously created). The tone throughout is contemptuous of evolutionary thought, dismissing Darwinism as a “fairy tale” that is “closer to fiction than to science” and arguing that a proper understanding of DNA is proof of that. But the film actually delivers a crude oversimplification—or more properly, perversion—of Darwin's thought, wrongly implying some sort of volition among “animals evolving from other animals” and studiously ignoring the vast amount of data in evolution's favor. The alternative offered is in fact a fundamentalist reading of scripture, which is said to be supported by what's called “the overwhelming evidence that every eye can see.” Life's Story will certainly appeal to those with a certain ideological and religious viewpoint to push, but from an intellectual and scientific perspective, it's a profoundly misleading, dishonest presentation. DVD extras include a “school dictionary” of terms. Given the fact that even so august a religious institution as the Vatican recently implied that God and evolution are not mutually exclusive, there seems to be no compelling reason to pick up this caricature of a scientific documentary. Not recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (F. Swietek)