There's a lot of talk about how important what they are doing and people congratulating each other, but they don't really explain much of anything. It's not for a lack of time as they spend too much time on long shots of the countryside or segues with meaningless background chatter. Why did they spend so much time on the kickoff party (complete with rapping physicists) when they could have delved into science a lot more? For a "science" documentary, they missed the audience.
If it was meant as a human interest story centered around David Kaplan, that failed too. The scientists they spend less time on come across as smart and likable. Not so much Kaplan who barely tries to explain the importance of CERN but wants funding but doesn't want to write grant applications because people just won't understand. So, after complaining that this research needs to be funded because it is so important, Kaplan immediately talks about how his mentor will only allow three co-researchers on any experiment because he couldn't win a Nobel Prize if there were more. This of course begs the question, if the research is so important, why are you limiting the number of people in hopes that you'll win a prize? If you're doing pure research, shouldn't your personnel decisions be based on doing research, not winning prizes?
Kaplan may be a very nice guy who isn't actually like this, but the clips the director shows come across that way. Overall, too little information for a science documentary and too boring for a human interest story.
If it was meant as a human interest story centered around David Kaplan, that failed too. The scientists they spend less time on come across as smart and likable. Not so much Kaplan who barely tries to explain the importance of CERN but wants funding but doesn't want to write grant applications because people just won't understand. So, after complaining that this research needs to be funded because it is so important, Kaplan immediately talks about how his mentor will only allow three co-researchers on any experiment because he couldn't win a Nobel Prize if there were more. This of course begs the question, if the research is so important, why are you limiting the number of people in hopes that you'll win a prize? If you're doing pure research, shouldn't your personnel decisions be based on doing research, not winning prizes?
Kaplan may be a very nice guy who isn't actually like this, but the clips the director shows come across that way. Overall, too little information for a science documentary and too boring for a human interest story.