David Morrill Schlitt is a Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. He is a graduate of Columbia University in New York City.

If an episode of Family Feud were to feature the category “Boring Things to Feature in a Wide-Release Film,” one could imagine a high-ranking response being something like “Industrial-Grade Adhesives” or “A Slideshow.” But the top-ranked answer, naturally, would be “Al Gore.” As it happens, a movie starring both Al Gore and a slideshow will be coming to a theater near you in just a few months (Industrial-grade adhesives were conspicuously absent from the production). And amazingly, this film, An Inconvenient Truth, may be one of the most engaging movies to come out of Hollywood this year.

On Wednesday, April 26 th, I had the opportunity to see an advance screening of An Inconvenient Truth arranged for environmental policy wonks, followed by a question-and-answer period with Vice President Gore and Davis Guggenheim, the director. The former-Veep was witty and engaging during the Q&A—he had the demeanor of a man grateful to be freed from the neutered vocabulary of the campaigning politician. And the movie’s tone exhibited a similar sort of passion.

An Inconvenient Truth chronicles the former Vice President’s efforts to raise awareness about climate change by barnstorming the globe and delivering a presentation he modestly refers to as his slideshow. In reality, Gore’s “slideshow” is a sophisticated production (complete with an original Futurama short) that lays out the science behind climate change and makes the case for an urgent and dramatic response. In An Inconvenient Truth, we see a side of Al Gore that many of us may not be used to: He’s both inspiring and inspired, and even funny and cool (albeit in the same way that your father the podiatrist is funny and cool).

Oh, and also: An Inconvenient Truth is scare-off-your-pants-terrifying. I work on environmental issues at the RAC, I spend a lot of my time working on climate change, I figured I had this stuff pretty much down—but An Inconvenient Truth changed the way I looked at the problem. Thanks to the film’s power and clarity, I left the theater with a renewed sense of urgency regarding climate change. The film’s website is helpful enough to offer some very useful ways to act on that sense of mission. The site also has links to the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth, for those of you that like your movies two minutes long and tiny.

“Climate change,” said Gore in the Q&A, “is not a partisan issue: it’s a moral issue—the defining moral issue of our time.” And the Veep, now done with politics, now a full-time advocate, calls on us to meet this challenge as a whole new Greatest Generation. That’s an epic mission he is charging us with. Except, instead of fighting in deadly hand-to-hand combat on the beaches of the Marianas Islands, we get to start out by watching a really neat movie. An Inconvenient Truth will be coming to theaters on June 2 nd.