Release: 2011, Television
Starring: Henry Strozier, George Armelagos, Charlie Bamforth
Directed by: Martyn Ives
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: In acient times, beer caused the agricultural revolution and has followed humanity in it's scientific evolution ever since. This documentary gives us the whole story.
Hans' thoughts:
This was a very comedic documentary. Throughout the thing it seemed almost as though they had pulled the narrator directly from movies like George of the Jungle or Monty Python and The Holy Grail. This is a good thing, because one cannot deny the jokey nature of what they're trying to convey. However, the facts are for most part actually there. We're actually shown how bacteria act at times, we're giving real technical explanations and everything is not just told through funny little animations. Albeit some of it is. I do have a minor gripe with it and that is lack of clarification of the experts. The narrator mentions their names and jobs but it would have been nice with the traditional info-bars at the bottom of the screen when they were on. The movie is called "How Beer saved the World" because I guess "How beer was randomly present at some major historical discoveries" didn't sound quite as good. While some of the arguments do make sense, in that yes, Pasteur using Beer to discover microorganisms is a cool connection some these things are a bit of a stretch. A good example is them jokingly saying Beer built the pyramids because it was a major source of nourishment in ancient egypt. They're also saying that beer invented writing simply because the worlds oldest language have 160 words for it. However, it is a funny little show and there is a lot of fun trivia to share across the pool table in it. So it's good to kill time.
