This movie is about a geeky, high-level British finance professional named Lawrence (Bill Nighy) who advises the equivalent of our Secretary of the Treasury during the G-8 summit in Iceland. Right before the summit, he meets Gina (Kelly MacDonald) in a café. They have an awkward date or two, and he impulsively invites her to be his guest at the summit. She agrees, and with working-class common sense, she says things that politicians aren't used to hearing, like, "If you have the power to stop children from dying of poverty, why wouldn’t that be your highest priority?" Her bluntness mortifies her date and his bosses and causes quite a stir among the world leaders, who've met to discuss important issues, including one pesky proposal: relieving Third World debt so those countries will have the money to serve their poor. 

The end of the film is abrupt, because all you see is the summit spokesperson saying something like, "At this summit, we had the opportunity to save the lives of millions of children..." Cut to black. Or rather, cut to Brad Pitt’s ad for www.one.org's campaign from earlier in 2005. I assume this indicates that the film was published before the real-life summit, and no one knew how the story would end.

It's clear that the film was made for political purposes -- if you call ending world poverty political and not social. The strong message, however, is that one voice can make a difference, which is an important message for middle-schoolers and teens.

Now for the caveat: The couple ends up in the same hotel room because Lawrence doesn't plan ahead by reserving a separate room for Gina. She sleeps on the sofa for a few nights before slipping into his bed. There's a shot of her in only bikini underwear, and the couple kisses for a few seconds. Then in the next scene, they're covered by sheets, and she remarks, "If you can’t get to sleep now, I’ve just wasted 45 minutes." That's the only sexual reference in the film. When Lawrence is angry at himself for staying in Iceland after his date is booted back to the U.S., he watches the plane fly off and shouts into the wind, “F---! F---! F---!”

I think this movie is terrific and could start some interesting conversations between parents and kids about what they would be willing to speak up for.