Honolulu Weekly

Capitalism: A Love Story / Right-wingers rev up your tempers and get ready to stab at the keyboard in a tweet-rage, Michael Moore is back. This time our favorite rotund documentary-filmmaker takes on an entire ideology with Capitalism: A Love Story. The subtitle is rather obvious and that’s basically what we get here: Moore bangs us over the head with his arguably worthwhile message that the premise of laissez faire is not working for our country.

The film opens by comparing the current state of America with the fall of the Roman Empire and asking how future societies will judge us for our system of giving and (mostly) taking. Moore points to Ronald Reagan and his staff of corporate advisers as the cause of our economic decline, pledging allegiance to the profit margin. In a nutshell, they weakened the unions and provided a protected means for the wealthy to get wealthy and the poor to “buy” into the American Dream and fail miserably.

Thankfully, Moore manages the superhuman feat of, for the most part, keeping himself outside of the proceedings, choosing instead to focus on the compelling stories of ordinary citizens affected by the free market enterprise model and the fallout from the 80s. We learn that airline pilots’ salaries average $16-20K a year and some of the men and women keeping us up in the air are actually on food stamps. In other segments, it is discovered that Wal-Mart takes out life insurance policies to profit on their deceased employees (blatantly referred to as Dead Peasants Insurance) and we see families forced out of their homes after buying into complex refinancing schemes where the odds were stacked against them paying it off in the first place.

Moore doesn’t quite offer a solution to these financial nightmares, although the allusion is that socialism, or at the very least, operating as a true democracy, might not be that bad. Practically painted as saint-like heroes are Obama, Jonas Salk– for altruistically giving away the polio vaccine with no desire for self-profit, and Roosevelt and his proposal for a second Bill of Rights; one that would ensure that every citizen will be provided a decent job, livable wage, universal health care, good education, affordable housing, paid vacation, and adequate pension– things that Europe and Japan already provides its people. And to respond to the “If you don’t like it, get out” theory, Moore threatens, “I refuse to live in a country like this and I’m not leaving.”

But of course, it wouldn’t be a Moore movie if the director didn’t engage in his usual innocuous shenanigans which are now becoming more juvenile than edgy, especially after the particularly envelope-offending verite hijinks of Borat and Bruno. He backs an armored car up to various corporate buildings demanding our share of the bailout money. Later he surrounds these buildings with yellow crime scene tape. Oh Mike, you’re just so wacky! All these exercises really do is pad out the run time, but things could have been worse. One expected Moore to take one of the displaced families and truck them to a CEO’s mansion and force the exec to provide them room and board. He should be commended for his restraint there.

By this point, docu-philes and armchair pundits either cheer Moore on in his crusades or instantly gag whenever the man pesters a poor corporate security guard. As a filmmaker, at this point in his career, the documentarian’s projects are hard to find surprising. Like Transformers, we get exactly what we expect. Nothing more. And especially after the timeliness of Bowling for Columbine and the necessity of Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore taking on the broad and complex nature of our economy seems obvious and simplistic. And it’s also a subject more complicated and all-encompassing to be covered in a two-hour movie. It would be fascinating for Moore to aim his ire at issues that are outside of his “comfort” zone.

Regardless, it’s undeniable that his films pack an educational and emotional punch to the rhetoric. For the most part, everything is watchable and although blatantly one-sided, informatively moving. The already converted will eat Capitalism: A Love Story up and ask for seconds. The non-converted will write scathing op-ed notes on their Facebook pages.