When choosing to watch the film The Crusade: How to Save the Planet, I was most attracted by the description of the film and its length of only 67 minutes. It is a 2021 film by actor, director and screenwriter Louis Garrel, based on a script written by Garrel and the famous screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. In terms of genre, it is a comedy that problematizes and satirises the boring everyday life of married couples with children. The premise seems promising and original, but the film fails, and it seems that it does not even try to meet the expectations of the audience.

The film follows a married couple whose son is involved in a secret children's organisation that has a plan to save the planet by travelling to Africa and bringing water to the Sahara. Through the further course of the story, we learn more about an organisation that is very radical in its views and plans for the future of humanity, and it is led by children who have ceased to be children, devoting themselves to a greater idea for which they are ready to make sacrifices. The title of the film is a reference to the Crusade in which children allegedly participated because it was believed that they would reclaim the holy land with the purity of their souls. This is how the young people in Garrel's film exude the purity of their ideas.

The world of children is opposed to the boring environment of adults who do not have enough understanding for their needs. This is evidenced by the first scene in the film, unfortunately the most striking. The boy confesses to his parents that he has been stealing from them for months without their knowledge. These are banal objects from everyday life, thus the author shows how selfish older people are and unwilling to give up things they never use. Although bold in reflecting on ecology, children are presented in all other respects as stereotypical children, despite the film trying to criticise adults who view them that way.

In addition to adult criticism, one of the central themes of this film is ecology, although Garrel is not ready to offer any opinion on it. It is not entirely clear to me whether the director perceives ecology as trivial or whether his approach to the topic is trivial, because he even uses the famous speech of Greta Thunberg that she gave as a girl. It is incomprehensible why he chose this approach, perhaps because she is the central figure of children's eco-activism, but her serious performance is different from the rest of the film, which is playful and silly. The film is dominated by the colors of everyday life, and the director most often opts for a bright blue. The scene in which the children show their model of Africa looks impressive due to the use of neon lights, although it differs from the visual identity of the rest of the film. The pace of the film is fast, just like Garrel's "jumping" from topic to topic.

I don't think that ecology cannot be the subject of comedy and that in terms of style and genre, the film is a failure, but that burning contemporary problems must be approached much more thoroughly. The film desperately tries to provide commentary on other current social topics, such as young people's sexual relations and even racism. All this makes The Crusade: How to save the planet seem crowded with motives, none of which lead to a point and meaning. At the level of directing, storytelling and acting, everything seems unconvincing and poorly executed. It seems that Garrel had more important things to do while filming this film.