Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea is a sort of ecological morality tale. This film is fascinating like a slow motion road accident.
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09/17/07
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Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (2007)
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Reviews Counted:46
Fresh:44
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.3/10
Consensus: Plagues And Pleasures is a thoroughly engrossing account, both humorous and disheartening, of a once bustling community ravaged by ecological change and human greed.
Theatrical Release:2006
Synopsis: Fabulously offbeat and refreshingly upbeat, this lovable film gets friendly with the natives of the Salton Sea, an inland ocean of massive fish kills, rotting resorts, and 120 degree nights located... [More]
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Reviews for Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
A sad but interesting sociological study of a not completely abandoned desert outpost that seems to be saying, "where there's water there will be humanity."
09/16/07
Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea is funny, enlightening, informative, and most importantly of all - admiring.
09/10/07
A stunning documentary that combines elements of An Inconvenient Truth and Vernon, Florida.
09/08/07
It's an absorbing, frightening witness to nature's final hours, filled with strangely enlightening accounts of life on a lifeless terrain.
09/06/07
Humorously narrated by cult filmmaker John Waters, Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea evokes both laughter and tears.
08/22/07
Narrated with morbid relish by John Waters, this witty doc chronicles the rise and ruination of the Salton Sea, a tiny inland ocean once promoted as 'Californias Riviera' but now a festering, apocalyptically hideous ecological disaster zone.
07/12/07
As documentary subjects go, the Salton Sea was ripe for the plucking: This man-made phenomenon is one of the weirdest stories of the West.
06/04/07
Top CriticA smart and engrossing film that illustrates in sharp and convincing detail how ecological accidents can mushroom into full-blown disasters as long as people are willing to turn a blind eye to their ongoing impact.
06/04/07
Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer found a strange place -- in California, of all places -- and made a video postcard about its colorful denizens and ecological calamity.
06/01/07
[An] occasionally lighthearted but always affecting cautionary tale.
06/01/07
This is a startlingly funny portrait of Gothic Americana.
05/31/07
If it's not likely to send you scurrying off to the place on your next vacation, it's still a fascinating, nutty story, a kind of Chinatown gone wrong (or gone more wrong ).
05/31/07
Top CriticTakes a light-and-lively approach to the local population, consisting of transplanted oddballs and stubborn survivors drawn to the Sea's calm, sunny environs and isolated, crime-free lifestyle.
05/22/07
Both a history lesson on the birth and death of an American city and a portrait of people who refuse to give up on a dream. It is also a grass-roots ecological tract made up of equal parts science, folklore and kitschy nostalgia.
05/22/07
[Provides] a funny, poignant tribute to a most unusual place and the people who somehow call it home.
05/11/07
Even if the Salton Sea itself stinks, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springers documentary about the improbable body of water where, the witty Waters deadpans, 'utopia and the apocalypse unite to dance a dirty tango' certainly does not.
04/20/07
An often-fascinating document of change -- incremental as evaporation, or catastrophic as flooding.
04/19/07
Amusing, interesting and odd, then begins to drag.
04/11/07
Historically thorough and thoroughly hysterical.
04/20/06
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