Movie Review: Michael Moore Hates America

In the interest of even-handedness - OK, that's bullshit - my wife rented this movie, Michael Moore Hates America, and I watched a bunch of it. A better title would have been - Michael Wilson Wants to Make a Documentary in the Worst Way - and he does. There are a lot of people you never heard of complaining about Michael Moore in the movie, plus one you have heard of - Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller. Jillete manages to be moderately amusing, but I can't recall him laying a glove on Michael Moore. The rest of his cast of characters includes a sprinkling of people who feel they have been wronged or misrepresented by Moore.

Wilson is clearly trying to pattern his movie making on Moore, but he is much less successful. Michael Moore is a heavy handed propagandist, but he is clearly motivated by righteous anger at injustice, so his message resonates with those who hate injustice. Michael Wilson is apparently motivated by the desire to make a documentary in the Moore style with Moore as target - it's a thin pretext, and it doesn't work well here.

Michael Moore's movies tend to feature odd perigrinations culminating in a satyrical or emotional point. Michael Wilson's movie features similar wandering ending in anticlimax (We drove around looking for Michael Moore near this town where he has a cabin, but we never found it) - doh!

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