By Dr. Robert Thorson

Everyone should see the film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Its message is in its medium.

The content, as you probably know, concerns the science of climate change, with particular attention to the melting of polar ice. On this subject, I have neither quibble nor comment. What I found fascinating about this movie experience, however, was that it actually was the Al Gore PowerPoint presentation I had read about in the reviews.

I thought, how boring this must be for a moviegoing culture so sated with special effects that Al’s lecture would seem no more exciting than a sock sitting in a laundry basket. There were no bells and whistles, no sexy babes, muscular hunks, car crashes, alien creatures or guns. Aside from a few autobiographical details, the film focused on three main ideas: how our climate system works, the changes taking place and his hopeful messages for action.

I thought how different this was from “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” which I saw with my 13-year-old daughter while on summer vacation. This blockbuster sequel adds squeamish fantasy about submarine life-after-death to the prequel’s fictional distortions about piracy, which, in turn, were distorted from an exaggerated theme park ride loosely based on historic fact. Though bereft of ideas, “Pirates” broke all box office records, taking in $132 million during its opening weekend, exceeding the total box office receipts for articulate Al’s film by a factor of four.

The special effects of “Pirates” were astonishing, the orchestration was full, the swordfights were dicey and the acting was reasonable (though I did have trouble with Johnny Depp’s metrosexual makeup). There was, however no content in the film, absolutely nothing for one’s gray matter to digest when exiting the theater.

This was not the case when I exited the theater after “An Inconvenient Truth.” It was then that I realized that Al’s message revealed a second inconvenient truth: that ideas themselves are no longer enough to arouse popular culture, as they did during the lyceum movement of the American 19th century. What seems to count today is emotional arousal in the primitive limbic system rather than thoughtful planning in the more highly evolved cerebrum.

The lyceum — named after the gymnasium in Athens where Aristotle taught — was and remains a place where listening to live performers brimming with ideas is considered entertainment, at least among the educated. The lyceum in Concord, Mass., where the Transcendentalists held forth, was especially active. The lyceum in Kennebec, Maine, sponsored one of my lectures last spring. My favorite lyceum experience, however, was the fictional pandemonium that erupted in London when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger claimed the existence of living dinosaurs in his Victorian novel “The Lost World.”

Al Gore’s movie is stunningly retro because he gives us a genuine lyceum experience. The content is real, the presentation eloquent, the message provocative. I was thoroughly entertained. But the true genius of his film is using the modern cineplex — a place where people are comfortable — to present the uncomfortable observation that Planet Earth is beginning to broil.

In early July, I was invited by Sen. John Larson’s office to join a panel discussion following a free public showing of “Inconvenient Truth” at Manchester Community College. Though I was unable to make it, this event sounded like a wonderful thing for a politician to do for his constituents: sponsor a lyceum to show a film about a lyceum. Apparently, political responsibility now includes an obligation to stimulate public discourse about critical topics.

After comparing “Truth” with “Pirates,” I took my concerns to the next level. How much more boring would it have been if Al had skipped the PowerPoint completely and asked us to read the inconvenient truth of his message instead? Reading for intellectual arousal? Come on! That’s passe. Not in today’s youth culture. Who needs a library, a newspaper or a lyceum when there’s a television in the nearest waiting room and a cineplex at the nearest exit ramp?

I am no Hollywood curmudgeon. I love movies, especially when they have something to say. An “Inconvenient Truth” does. “Pirates” does not.