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Chad
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Posted: October 7, 2004 at 12:00am
Michael Moore, in typical fashion, goes over the Bush administration in regards to his reasons for wanting to go to war, who all is benefiting the most from it, and the effects it has on everyday people. His messages are sent through the use of newspaper headlines, news-reports, speeches, and the usual stunts (ie, asking congressmen to enlist their children in the military). Not much more to it than that, we're just treated to two hours of footage to back up his claims and ideas.
To start out this review, I'd like to point out a few things. First: I'm normally a huge fan of Moore's. I've read a few of his books, seen the movies, and read a number of articles from his site. While there's a few ideas of his that I disagree with, I agree with a large enough number to consider myself a decent-sized fan of his. Second: I despise our president, George W. Bush. I disagree with his policies, I disagree with the war, and I could care less who ends up in office for the next four years, as long as it isn't this mongrel. So, a documentary consisting of two hours of Bush-bashing done by Michael Moore should garner an instant 10/10, no need for further review... correct?
Not quite. The first (and by far the main) problem here is the way that certain issues are reiterated more than they should be. Moore will make a point that I'll agree with, then he'll say it again in different terms, then he'll put up a humorous clip to further cement his point, and finally, he'll say it again in completely different terms. This style of documentary that Moore used isn't exclusive to this film (see also: Bowling For Columbine), but in previous films, Moore kept it interesting by throwing in different facts and figures while reiterating his point. Here, we're basically seeing a carbon copy of the last scene put into different words for a rather alarming percentage of the runtime. The second problem that I had with this, was the shortage of unknown facts as opposed to earlier movies by him and similar documentary makers. While I'll admit that there was a good number of things presented here that I was unaware of (mostly numbers and small-town happenings), there was a larger number of items presented that I was already aware of prior to watching this film. By no means am I a big news-reader, but I'd venture to guess that I knew about half of the things that were brought up prior to watching this film. When you add in the previous point about the rehashing of things repeatedly, this made for more than a few moments of wanting to hit the fast-forward button.
That's not to say that this isn't worth a viewing, though. If you're thinking of putting Bush back into office, this might be something you should check out before throwing down your vote come Election Day. For those of you who rely on CBS, Fox or ABC as your sole news-source, then I'd also point this movie out as a worthy viewing experience, as it shows things that the big news-sources do not. However, if you tend to stay semi-updated on the news from a truly independent source, you'll likely find a number of scenes here to be boring as well, though the good does outweigh the bad in the long run.
Overall, it's worth the viewing, though it wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be. The message is definitely a good one, and it's obvious that Moore put a lot of work into this. Though understandable, it's a shame that the production was (seemingly) too rushed in order to make it out into the public audience before election time rolls around. 7/10.
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Deadwired2
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Posted: July 3, 2005 at 7:04am
Just as much propaganda as anything on FOX.
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