The Last Tourist

There is some truly eye opening stuff in here about mass tourism destroying local communities, biodiversity and a lack of trickle down economics when it comes to rich people coming to poor areas. But all of this is laid moot by focus on things that have nothing to do with tourism; people in South America talking about weaving? Nope, not needed. It is detours like these that destroy the momentum of the film and there are moments where a perfect cresendo of visual montages coupled with destructive effects of mass tourism is absolutely demolished by these illogical detours. Also, the doc could have been shorter by 10-15 minutes as well. Overall, a good effort but needs another go in the editing room to make it more effective.

Very informative and I really liked how they brought up such important issues like the mistreatment of animals purely for profit from tourism but here and there they got their issues mixed up especially at the end with peoples seemingly random testimonials that had nothing to do with tourism. "I will never use plastic utensils or bags again" what does that have to do with the negative impact of tourism on community's and animals? While sustainability is an important message that's not what this was about and it was very confusing. The testimonials should have been "I won't go somewhere where you can ride elephants and take pictures with tigers" instead it was "I won't use plastic shampoo bottles" like wtf were they thinking with that. Anyway other than getting their issues mixed up it was very good.

Of course, one should not travel mindlessly as is pointed out here. But if you truly care about life on the planet, you will not be flying for fun. This misses the bigger picture and ignores the climate catastrophe. I know, few want to hear the truth.

The documentary swings from one problem to another, many of these problems aren't actually tourism problems.

There's a documentary in here, and a really good story to tell, if they could have concentrated on this, the main focus being the cruelty towards animals and the overarching theme that you vote with your currency.

Unfortunately we lurch from "too much tourism" to "not enough tourism", and from the animals and then to the children, and then back again but with little narrative to connect this all together.

Conclusion: a good docukentarty could be in here, its well shot from a cinematography point of view but because of the narratove I'd give this a pass.

As other reviewers have said, there are some good messages in this documentary that more people need to be made aware of. Like environmental damage, lack of money flowing to local communities, cruelty to animals and the damage of volunteer tourism. But the film lacks focus and jumps around too much amongst these themes and it is way too long. Easily 30 minutes should have been chopped off here. Or it should have been a mini series covering one issue at a time. The editor was no wear near aggressive enough and the messaging was too repetitive. Like how many people do you need telling us the same thing?! There was even the same people saying the same thing in a slightly different way multiple times. With better editing it could be an 8.