Review: Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

[Tim Skirvin]

  I like Michael Moore movies.  I suppose that many would consider
this a shameful admission; and if I tried, I'm sure I could justify it by
talking about how it's a joy to look at pure propaganda.  But truth be told,
I like Michael Moore.  TV Nation was a great show, back in the day; The
Awful Truth was pretty funny too.  His early movies were amusing, and his
stunts were fairly clever and confrontational in a way that I generally
respected.  And as time went on, his skills as a propagandist have grown -
which as done a fairly effective job of counteracting the problems that his
increased notoriety has caused.  

  As such, I did have some expectations going into _Capitalism: A
Love Story_.  And I was disappointed.

  Part of the problem with _Capitalism_ was clearly that the topic
was very broad.  The format of Moore's movies is best-suited for a narrow
topic, the smaller the better; but this movie is about an entire economic
system, rather than the collapse of a factory town or a more narrow
political area like gun control or health care.  There's never a chance to
examine the various sides of the issue in any kind of serious way; there is
never a chance to fill in the caricatures, or even the basic theories.  The
movie simply lacked focus, and 

  Worse were the stunts - or, perhaps, a lack of them.  Moore's
cameras sat in on some home foreclosures, which failed to shine any
sympathy on anybody involved while also bringing into question why nobody
was willing to intervene.  Moore attempted to perform some citizen's arrests
at Goldman Sachs and other banks; this simply seemed half-hearted.  And
everything else hardly seemed connected.  There were some smiles at the
silliness here and there, but even that was hurt by the oddly out-of-place
cursing.  All in all, it just seemed...  badly put together.  

  Somewhere in between was the quality of the arguments.  Moore didn't
really attack capitalism in this movie; he attacked the bailout, and he
attacked corruption, but he didn't attack the whole system.  If he'd left it
at that, that'd be okay - it worked okay in _Bowling for Columbine_, for
instance - but but in this case, he took what little he had and called for
even more change than he ever had before.  Frankly, he overplayed his hand,
and even what value the movie had as propaganda was damaged as a result.

  It's a shame; there were some interesting details in there, such as
the discussion of Dead Peasant insurance policies and (most prominently) a
look back at Flint, MI, where it all began.  But while the beginning of this
story was the best we're likely to get from Moore, this is likely the
worst.

  * 3/4

                           - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin at killfile.org)
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