It's a strange movie, but I would heartily recommend it to people who either like or love Neil Young and are interested in experimental cinema. The story is thin (but there is one), yes, but it's definitely a mind-affecting experience.
The thing I took away from it most (apart from the obvious ecological message, but that's always been a theme of Young's) was the stylistic choice to film most of the scenes in extra-grainy Super 8, but to insert these highly-produced segments from (fictional) TV news stations and the like. It's a simple message, but a good one: Young's trying to tell us that the world we see on TV, even the allegedly real world of news, isn't real, and that we trust it at our peril. The real world is shaky, and blurry, and hard to make out sometimes. Anything that looks slick, and easy to understand, is probably fake.
The thing I took away from it most (apart from the obvious ecological message, but that's always been a theme of Young's) was the stylistic choice to film most of the scenes in extra-grainy Super 8, but to insert these highly-produced segments from (fictional) TV news stations and the like. It's a simple message, but a good one: Young's trying to tell us that the world we see on TV, even the allegedly real world of news, isn't real, and that we trust it at our peril. The real world is shaky, and blurry, and hard to make out sometimes. Anything that looks slick, and easy to understand, is probably fake.