MOVIE REVIEW : Ecological ‘Saviors’ Go on the Road

“Saviors of the Forest” (showing weekend mornings at 11 at the Monica 4), a feature-length look at the disappearing rain forests, is being touted as a “comedy documentary.”

It’s actually more whimsical than comedic, per se, but you can understand why they picked the tag. The two guys who made it want to put out an amusing piece that’s user-friendly to those who might not sit still for hard-core environmental agitprop, and in that they do a good job. Unfortunately, they also want to capture some of the populist aura of “Roger and Me,” which is biting off more than they can chew. (Or should that be chopping down more than they can saw?)

The movie’s very loose through-line is cameramen-cum-directors Bill Day’s and Terry Schwartz’s own quest to find an ecological story of value to film down in Ecuador. The corporate villains they hope to stumble across prove elusive. On the heroic side, they do find some British idealists who’ve formed a small, politically correct lumber company that intends to introduce “sustainable forestry” to the Ecuadorean villagers who sell their fields, as an alternative to the clear-cutting done by the bigger companies. But the Brits’ equipment gets held up for weeks in customs, so the documentarians come back to L.A. and film a Greenpeace raid on a lumber ship. Then they go to Spain to look for an environmentalist financier, who turns out to be in Mexico. . . .

A lot of the fleeting “comedy” comes from Day and Schwartz wandering from country to country, trying to find a theme for their film and a subject for their well-meaning activism. They never do. Most filmmakers would keep that kind of confusion under wraps, but at least Day and Schwartz are as amiable as they are honest. They don’t have nearly the wits required to pull off the Michael Moore routine they’re attempting, but injecting their own quasi-bemused travails into the story does lend the movie’s artless loose ends a little narrative drive.

And loose ends is all the movie really consists of, which is not to say the points covered aren’t educational. You wouldn’t want to clear-cut a path to see it, necessarily, but in its messy, intermittently diverting way, “Saviors of the Forest” does provide a reasonable primer in a lot of the key questions surrounding deforestation; for answers, you and the trees are still on your own.

A Camera Guys production. Executive producer Todd Darling. Co-executive producer Richard Hassen. Produced by Bill Day and Terry Schwartz. Written by Terry Schwartz. Directed by Bill Day. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: suitable for all audiences.