Is Moore too much?

Toby Manhire
Tuesday July 13, 2004
The Guardian

Michael Moore's cinematic broadside at the Bush administration opened in Britain on the crest of a pre-publicity wave. A surprise triumph at Cannes, wranglings over distribution, records broken at the US box office, gallons of approbation, a recoil of opprobrium: all meant many critical opinions had been formed long before the first frame screened.

"I went into this film expecting it to be unscrupulously selective and intellectually dishonest," confessed Christopher Tookey in the Daily Mail. "I did not expect it to be quite so lazy, incoherent, foolish and dull."

Over to Will Self, London Evening Standard film critic and opponent of the war in Iraq: "That this tendentious compilation of TV clips and manipulative japes should have won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes festival is a sorry comment on the film industry, and European film-makers in particular."

Manipulative? "The first half is rabble-rousing rhetoric so unscrupulous that it makes Nazi propaganda films look namby-pamby," said Tookey. It was the second half that got Mark Kermode's back up. The focus on the invasion of Iraq signalled "a change of tone from dry, biting satire to woolly, emotional blackmail", he said in the Observer. "Gradually, Moore's persona as a wry satirist gives way to his irritating alter-ego as a hectoring, self-righteous blunderbuss."

Impressions of Moore - "affable, friendly bear of a man" (Allan Hunter, Daily Express) or "28-stone battering ram" (James Christopher, Times) - tended to define perceptions of the film.

"Fahrenheit 9/11 is compulsive entertainment," said Anthony Quinn in the Independent. "But George Bush isn't the only man here you're inclined to distrust." Hear, hear, nodded Kermode. "Ask yourself this question: would you buy a used car from this man? Exactly."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselection...259730,00.html