Michael Moore Hates America

The portly polemicist is hoisted on his own petard by filmmaker Michael Wilson, who makes no secret of his desire to expose Moore as a wealthy hypocrite rather than the bedraggled outsider he pretends to be. Self-consciously aping Michael Moore’s approach in Roger & Me, Wilson tries to inveigle the Fahrenheit 911 director into sitting for an interview and records the opinions of such conservative pundits as Dinesh D’Souza and David Horowitz, along with those of documentarian Albert Maysles and entertainer Penn Jillette. But Wilson lacks his subject’s biting wit, and occasionally he resorts to the same selective-editing tricks of which he accuses Moore. Still, there are plenty of people who think the Sicko socialist is badly in need of a comeuppance, so this movie’s for them.

Shelf Talk: Made in 2004, Michael Moore Hates America played a few film festivals but never reached the nation’s multiplexes. Produced in rebuttal to Fahrenheit 911, it seems timely again thanks to the release of Sicko, but with right-leaning documentaries relatively scarce, there’s no real template for marketing or promoting a film of this type. Its reception will likely depend on the political makeup of retail communities.