Hurricane on the Bayou (2006)

You will almost certainly enjoy Hurricane on the Bayou if you appreciate Louisiana, New Orleans, cajun culture, jazz, blues, zydeco, or the environment (esp. wetlands preservation). Our story begins three months before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Cajun musicians Tab Benoit, a lifelong bayou dweller, and Amanda Shaw, a fiddle prodigy, verbally and physically express their love of music as they practice and perform together. They also express their love of the wetlands as they explore this verdant Louisiana habitat of alligators and other creatures. Tab tells how he has seen the wetlands shrink significantly since the creation of river levies, which slough tons of soil into the ocean that formerly built up the coastal cushion formed by the wetlands, and intracoastal waterways, which kill untold acres of wetlands by the introduction of salt water. Then Hurricane Katrina descends on New Orleans with scant warning; we see its devastation both during the storm and afterward. The human toll is hard to fathom unless you live on the Gulf coast. However, the movie's message is that Katrina would have been much worse without the coastal buffer of the wetlands; conversely, it would have been greatly ameliorated if so much of the wetlands had not been lost. On a positive note, Tab shows how alligators, which were an endangered species when he was a boy, have since become plentiful. He says we already know how to help preserve a species or a habitat; we just have to do it -- and reap the benefits through our current and future generations. 4.5 stars.