SCREEN

MICHAEL MOORE HATES AMERICA

Martin Stein













MICHAEL MOORE HATES AMERICA (R)

(4 stars)


Stars: Michael Wilson, Penn Jillette, Albert Maysles


Director: Michael Wilson


Details: Opens Friday



Michael Moore Hates America is everything that Michael Moore's oeuvre is not, in that it's an honest documentary about a serious topic: the shrillness of political debate.


Wilson easily exposes all of Moore's falsehoods that intelligent people already know about, like him not being from Flint, Michigan (which is doing quite well financially), his manipulation of film footage and sound clips, his outright lying to subjects, etc. What Wilson finds more difficult is to get Moore to agree to an interview (unlike, say, Charlton Heston), and it's this fruitless quest that serves as the film's skeleton. Along the way, he gives voice to the victims of Moore's cameras and cons, as well as indulging in a bit of psychoanalysis from author David T. Hardy (Moore is a classic narcissist), ethics from famed documentarian Albert Maysles (who thinks Moore does hate America) and philosophy from magician Penn Jillette (who says mixing politics, documentaries and comedy is like "playing three-dimensional chess underwater with a gun to your head").


But while Wilson starts with the premise that Moore hates America, he learns along the way that in the freest, most open society in the world, maybe that's OK.

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